Pre-marital blood test to check thalassemia faces problems

Islamabad

A joint meeting of the Senate Standing Committees on Law, Justice, Religious Affairs and Inter-faith Harmony on Wednesday asked the Ministry of Law, Ministry of Health Services, Ministry of Human Rights and Ministry of Religious Affairs to sit together and prepare a consensus draft on the premarital blood screening (Family Laws Amendment) Bill, 2016 with reference to blood screening for Thalassemia only. 

The meeting was held with Senator Javed Abbasi (chairman panel on law and justice) and Senator Hafiz Hamdullah (chairman panel on religious affairs) in the chair here at the Parliament House. The scope of the bill by Senator Chaudhary Tanvir Khan was limited to thalassemia so that the practicality of the blood screening is made easy. 

The committee and the mover of the bill agreed that other diseases can be included in the ambit of the bill at later stages. The objective of the bill is to spread awareness about and stop chances of thalassemia major; a disease which has no permanent treatment and requires blood transfusion every month. In case both parents have thalassemia minor, there is high probability that their baby will have thalassemia major. The bill asks for mandatory premarital blood screening to help prevention of thalassemia major in child. 

The forum heard members, concerned ministries, the National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR) and the National Commission on Status of Women (NCSW) on whether the blood screening should be made mandatory and whether option of marriage should be allowed in case of positive results.

Senator Hafiz Hamdullah read out a recommendation made by the Council of Islamic Ideology in 2010, which asked for including a column in marriage certificate requiring mention of the disease but at the same time gave authority to people to get married notwithstanding positive reports on presence of thalassemia minor. 

Senator Chaudhry Tanvir agreed to this recommendation while Senators Hamza, Sajid Mir, and Saleem Zia opposed the provision of choice and said that the couple should be stopped in case of positive results otherwise the aim of the bill of prevention of the disease might not be achieved. 

Chairman NCHR Justice (R) Ali Nawaz Chauhan and Chairperson NCSW Khawar Mumtaz mentioned that similar laws were in force in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and South Africa and asked for defining healthy marriage and premarital screening in the bill. 

It was also stated that before passing the bill the existing capacity of the government hospitals in Islamabad, having authorised testing labs, giving subsidised service and technical expertise for accurate interpretation has to be considered. The four ministries while giving their view told the meeting that the bill when passed will be under the Religious Affairs Ministry but its implementation has to be done by Health Services Ministry.

Human Rights Ministry recommended focus on awareness in the initial stages of implementation while keeping the screening voluntary and making it binding afterwards. The National Health Services Ministry told the meeting that similar bills have been passed by three provinces but still no difference has been noticed. 

The committee was also told that screening is not mandatory for both partners as the disease is transmittable only in case of thalassemia minor in both partners. The ministries in their joint draft will also touch upon the mechanism for making the law applicable to minorities.