Safe blood transfusion in govt hospitals in jeopardy

Many patients are going for blood transfusion (BT) without tests in the public hospitals for the last two years as there is no government supply of blood bags, screening devices and grouping reagent kits, sources said.
According to the sources, the annual demand for blood bags in the government hospitals is 0.6 million sets, screening devices 3 million sets and grouping reagent kits 6,000 vials.
The hardcore poor patients, admitted to public hospitals, cannot afford blood bags and screening before transfusion due to scarcity of BT sets and reagents, a nurse working at a public hospital in Dhaka said.
She said, "As we do not have supplies, the solvent patients source those from outside and many other poor people depend on social welfare donations for having a BT bag."
A doctor, working in a public hospital outside Dhaka and requesting not to be named, said the situation is horrible in his hospital.
He said a large number of unnecessary equipment are coming everyday but the necessary testing kits and reagents are not being made available.
National Safe Blood Transfusion Expert Committee General Secretary Dr Ashadul Islam said the government in the fiscal year (FY) 2013-14 procured only 100 thousands of BT bags and 400 thousands of grouping reagents against its huge demand.
He said in the last fiscal (FY14), there was no procurement of these vital bags, kits and reagents.
Another physician, working at the NICVD (the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases) said, "In the new fiscal year (FY15), we have already proposed supply of  new bags, reagents and kits but there is no government response yet."
He said already four months of the new fiscal have passed and till today there is no supply from the government.
He said if this continues to happen, the government's safe blood transfusion programme across the country would end up in utter failure.
An official in the Health Ministry said, "We are always positive in procurement of emergency supplies to our hospitals and we will soon find out the real situation."
Currently, in many district and upazila hospitals, blood is being pushed without doing proper screening due to scarcity of blood bags and other reagents. The situation there is becoming terrible now.
The poor people are directly affected by such unavailability of government supplies.

[email protected]