KARACHI: Power failures wreak havoc with blood quality
By Nizamuddin Siddiqui
KARACHI, May 14: The failure of KESC to supply electricity round the clock and lack of alternative sources of power in all probability are wreaking havoc with the quality of blood meant for transfusion.
Two experts told Dawn on Wednesday that blood bags should be stored in the blood banks at a temperature between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius. If for any reason — say a power breakdown — the temperature goes beyond this range, the quality of the stored blood suffers badly.
Dr Syed Abdul Mujeeb of the Jinnah Post-graduate Medical Centre and Dr Ziaur Rehman of the Fatimid Foundation said that if blood bags were kept at higher temperatures for more than 30 minutes, they could become unsafe for transfusion.
Dr Mujeeb said that not enough attention had been paid towards proper handling and storage of blood that is to be transfused. He added that small blood banks run for profit left much to be desired in this regard.
He said the situation obtaining in the interior of the province was particularly worrisome. “God knows how many blood banks do we have in the rural areas which don’t have generators. As you know power breakdowns are quite frequent in the interior. And I am sure very few people there are bothered about proper storage of blood.”
Dr Mujeeb was of the view that the proposed Blood Transfusion Authority — which is supposed to monitor the performance of the blood banks and which has been dormant for a considerable period of time — should be made fully operational as soon as possible.
“This project has been in the doldrums for too long. The time for proper implementation is now.”
Dr Ziaur Rehman acknowledged that according to a guideline of the American Association of Blood Banks, blood bags should be kept between 2 and 6 degrees Celsius. “Complications result if the bags are kept in higher temperatures for long periods of time,” he said.
“One complication is haemolysis. That’s the reason why every blood bank administrator is required to check the blood bags for haemolysis.”
Similarly, if the bags were kept at temperatures higher than recommended, contaminations acquired during the drawing of blood could multiply and then manifest themselves, said the medical director of Fatimid Foundation.
He, however, didn’t agree with the contention that blood bags could become unsafe if there was a breakdown of say 100 minutes. “Thirty minutes is the recommended time limit. But in our daily practice, we observe that temperatures are maintained within the recommended range inside a blood bank refrigerator if the power failure is of less than or equal to 100 minutes.
“Even two hours of breakdown is okay.” But he added that shutdown of more than two hours was indeed a problem.
In response to a question, Dr Ziaur Rehman said the Blood Transfusion Authority had received more than 10 applications for registration from the better known blood banks of the city. However, no follow-up work had been undertaken by the officials concerned.
Meanwhile, Dr S. Abdul Mujeeb’s book, Blood Transfusion — A Technical and Clinical Care, has this to say about the issue: “Blood should be stored in a refrigerator which is specifically designed to maintain a temperature of 2 to 6 degrees Celsius. Because of frequent and prolonged power failure in some parts and some seasons in the country, it is also very important to have alternative power supplies like generators to maintain refrigeration throughout the storage period.”
