LARKANA, Oct 18: Children suffering from thalassaemia and their parents staged a demonstration outside the press club on Tuesday in protest against closure of blood banks in the city.

Around 450 patients of thalassaemia are registered with four blood banks recently sealed in the city for selling unscreened blood.

Parents of the children have been put in trouble who received regular blood pints from the sealed blood banks.

The protesters said they had no alternative place to get blood for their children inflicted with the deadly disease.

Dr Farooq Soomro, the focal person for the Safe Blood Transfusion Authority in Larkana, said five blood banks were sealed as they did not meet the SBTA criteria.

Muzaffar Sandano, the father of thalassaemia patient Rafia, said that in the Larkana district 72 blood banks were working and the SBTA had sealed only five.

He said that rest of the blood banks could register the equal number of children for supplying blood on the regular basis to save their lives.

Very few patients will fall in one blood bank’s account and it could deliver well for ailing patients till the permanent arrangements, he said.

The parents said they had a meeting with Nisar Khuhro, leader of opposition in Sindh Assembly, a couple of days back who talked to the medical superintendent of the Chandka Medical College Hospital.

The MS of the CMCH, Dr Mehboob Shah, said the hospital could only do free blood screening at the moment as it had no record regarding the sufferers.

The parents urged the government and opposition to come to their help in the name of humanity so that their kids suffering from Thalassaemia could be saved.

They carrying their children in laps were continuously roaming from pillar to post to seek help for their children.

No arrangement had landed the innocent children into trouble where parents were finding it difficult to regularly get blood supply to keep their children alive.

The parents said that NGOs working for wellbeing of children should be entrusted to ensure the regular blood supply as they had regularly been getting donations from donor agencies.