‘System being evolved to provide healthy blood to patients’

LAHORE: Punjab Minister for Specialised Healthcare & Medical Education (SH&ME) Kh Salman Rafique has said provision of healthy blood is the basic right of every patient and keeping in view the importance of this fact a system is being evolved to provide screened and healthy blood to the patients admitted to private hospitals from the public sector blood banks.

He said that this system would not only be helpful to provide healthy blood to the patients but it would also discourage the business of sub-standard and inadequate blood banks. “Instead of patients, private hospitals would be responsible to ensure provision of blood for which these hospitals can sign MoUs with public sector blood banks. A committee is being constituted to finalise the procedure for this purpose,” he said while chairing a meeting of Punjab Blood Transfusion Authority (PBTA) to review the various steps for improving blood transfusion service in the committee room of Institute of Blood Transfusion, according to a handout issued here on Thursday. Secretary, PBTA, Dr Muhammad Athar, Additional Secretary Technical SH&ME Dr Salman Shahid, members of the board, representatives of public as well as private hospitals/blood banks and the representatives of different thalassemia foundations, Punjab Thalassemia Prevention Programme (PTPP) and PITB attended the meeting.

The participants of the meeting presented proposals for improving the blood transfusion facilities in the province and appreciated government’s efforts in this regard. On this occasion, Kh Salman Rafique said the Punjab government has made legislation on Punjab Blood Transfusion Act 2016 for establishing an efficient system to ensure provision of screened and healthy blood to the patients for which PBTA has also been established.

The meeting has decided that the blood banks of newly established medical colleges of Sialkot, Sargodha, Sahiwal, DG Khan, Gujranwala and Gujrat would soon be linked with the Punjab Institute of Blood Transfusion to improve their working.

Kh Salman Rafique said that in near future more regional blood centres would be set up in other divisional headquarters on the pattern of RBC’s of Multan & Bahawalpur. The minister said that RBC’s of Multan and Bahawalpur are the state of the art centres, performing with excellence. The minister directed that technical committee should immediately be constituted which should give recommendations within a month for improving blood screening procedure, the committee would be consisting of senior haematologists and representatives of Hepatitis Control Programme would also be member of the committee.

Kh Salman said that all the blood banks would be interlinked through a software which has been prepared by Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) and this programme is already running successfully in the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. He said this system would generate a central database of blood collected from the donors and it can be provided to the patients in any emergency situation. Kh Salman Rafique said that additional blood at the blood banks could also be provided to the different foundations for the thalassemia patients.