NEW DELHI: India’s notorious social distinctions based on caste and class have spilled into the blood donation sector that even reputable blood banks now advertise blood that is guaranteed not to come from the dregs of society.

A pamphlet distributed by the Rotary Blood Bank run in the national capital by Rotary International describes the pathetic situation of blood banking in India. It is marked by acute shortages, lack of volunteer donors, an unimplemented six-year-old Supreme Court ban on professional donors and, worst of all, unscientific social prejudices against certain classes of donors.

Says the pamphlet: “We understand that a large number of replacement donors are paid donors. We want to discontinue clandestine sale of blood. It is well known that several semi-nourished people, rickshaw pullers, drug addicts and other people short of money for smack, donate blood.”

The Rotary International facility was inaugurated in March by Lal Krishna Advani, home minister in the right-wing, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government.

The ‘better’ blood offered by Rotary comes at 18 dollars a unit, which is twice that charged by the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS) that runs the capital’s biggest blood banking facility and accounts for up to 45,000 units of transfusable blood annually.

Voluntary groups involved with the blood banking sector say that in spite of the high prices and socially discriminatory attitude, the Rotary facility has been accorded the status of a Regional Transfusion Centre (RTC) and granted funds worth more than a million dollars from government sources.

Questioned about Rotary’s maverick attitude, the Delhi State Blood Transfusion Council has promised action. “We have told Rotary that they should coordinate with other regional blood centres and also reduce their prices. If they do not conform we can withdraw their RTC status,” said Dr. Bharat Singh, member secretary of the Council. But rights organisations think that the RTC status accorded so far to the IRCS Blood Bank and to government facilities, should never have been given to an openly elitist organisation like the Rotary International in the first place.

“The Rotary Blood Bank is setting a precedent for the commercialisation of blood banking in a country where the official policy is that blood should not be traded in,” said Purushottaman Mulloli, convenor of the Join Action Council (JAC), an umbrella organisation for rights groups that focuses on issues related to public health and HIV/AIDS.

Indeed, it was such a view that was supposed to have guided the Supreme Court into passing an order five years ago banning professional donors from selling their blood. Buying blood from professional donors goes back to colonial times and was institutionalised during the Second World War when large quantities of transfusable blood was required and few Indians were willing to donate what they considered to be a precious fluid.

The Supreme Court ban did not appreciably change things and several voluntary organisations have brought out detailed reports showing that the bulk of blood available for transfusion continues to come from professional donors with the trade going underground and prices shooting skywards.

According to Iqbal Malik, who runs ‘Vatavaran’ an NGO which had the trade videographed and aired through television channels three years ago, Delhi alone needs an estimated 300,000 units of blood annually and less than half of that is legally collected by various blood banks while the rest is still sourced from professional donors.

The Rotary International pamphlet, apart from outlining social prejudices testifies to the fact that dependence on professional donors is widespread.

Such are the prejudices that last year, when large quantities of blood were needed for the survivors of the devastating Jan 26 earthquake in western Gujarat state, the IRCS refused to accept blood from the inmates of the Central Jail.

Jail authorities complained to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) of an attitude that was “highly discriminatory” towards prisoners as well as “derogatory and in violation of human rights”, but the NHRC upheld the IRCS decision.

That came as a blow to the prisoners because under existing rules, if they donate blood twice a year they are entitled to a month’s remission on their sentences for that year.

Official figures available for the year 2000 show India now importing annually 540 million dollars worth of blood products sourced mostly from France and the United States and the trend steadily rising. —Dawn/InterPress News Service