48 blood banks seized

Karachi
Forty-eight illegal blood banks were closed in Sindh during 2014 owing to substandard blood samples, commercial blood banking and various other irregularities.
Sindh Blood Transfusion Authority (SBTA) Programme Manager Dr Zahid Hasan Ansari said on Thursday that 28 of the blood banks were closed in Karachi alone. "Seventeen registered and 11 non-registered blood banks were sealed in Karachi for not following the criteria of authority and other issues."
The SBTA monitoring teams, he said, had launched a crackdown across Karachi with the assistance of police and town officials and successfully closed the blood banks established around major hospitals. No new blood banks were opened in Sindh in 2014, as the SBTA would introduce a centralised blood banking system soon.
Ansari said four regional blood banks were under construction in Karachi, Nawabshah, Jamshoro and Sukkur. Three of them would be made functional from July 1, 2015.
All the small blood banks would be linked with larger blood banks to ensure safe blood supply to patients throughout the province, he explained.
Ansari said that 152 registered blood banks were operational in Sindh. About 148 blood banks have been sealed across the province in the past few years.