Islamabad: As the planning and development division maintains the budget of the Safe Blood Transfusion Programme for the current fiscal, national coordinator of the initiative, Professor Hasan Abbas Zaheer, strongly feels that the positive development will help further the cause of blood safety in the country.
The decision to maintain the programme’s financial budget without any cuts was made during a meeting called here to review the physical and financial progress on the Public Sector Development Projects (PSDP) 2017-18.
During the meeting, financial cuts were made in the funding of the projects over slow progress or non-execution. Federal Planning, Development and Reforms Minister Ahsan Iqbal, who chaired the meeting, expressed satisfaction with the progress of the blood transfusion programme and appreciated its achievements and thus, leading to the maintaining of its financial budget for the current fiscal year without deduction.
Professor Hasan told ‘The News’ that the health ministry had established the Safe Blood Transfusion Programme in 2010 with the support of the German government through its KFW-funded Financial Cooperation component and GIZ-funded Technical Cooperation component.
He said during the last seven years, significant progress had been made in establishing and strengthening the blood regulatory system, blood supply system and blood transfusion system in Pakistan.
“The blood transfusion authorities have been revived throughout the country; a network of modern regional blood centres supporting hospital based blood banks has been developed, and the associated supporting technical work has been conducted including capacity building, voluntary blood donation promotion, revising legislation, curriculum development, advocacy etc,” he said.
The SBTP national coordinator said the first phase of the programme was successfully completed in 2016 in which a network of large modern regional blood centres was developed to create a new blood supply system (15% of the national coverage).
“These centres have started to become operational and are providing direct benefit to the patients in the shape of safe blood components through hospital blood banks, which have been renovated by the programme. The blood supply and blood transfusion system has been strengthened along with the regulation system reformation,” he said.
Professor Hasan said the second phase of the project began in 2016 in which the scope and coverage of the project would be further expanded through continued German government support with the creation of more regional blood centres supporting the linked hospital blood banks and the up-gradation of large public sector blood centres as well as strengthening of the regulatory system. He said the German partners had categorised the SBTP as ‘a flagship project’ and the German ambassador has described it as ‘a matchless experience and a project to emulate’.
