May 19, 2006	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 20, 1427

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PESHAWAR, May 18: Children suffering from thalassaemia, who need regular blood transfusion, are more vulnerable to hepatitis infection, paediatricians said.

“About 10 to 15 per cent of such children acquired hepatitis-B or -C in 2005. Most of them had received more than 10 pints of blood in private blood transfusion centres,” a local paediatrician said, who carried out a study on 75 thalassaemia patients.

He said that hepatitis robbed these children, who suffered from an incurable disease and faced certain death, of their chances to survive longer.

There are 40,000 thalassaemia patients in the NWFP but the province’s public sector hospitals are without blood transfusion facilities and these children are entirely at the mercy of private centres.

Doctors say that most of the children belonged to poor families, who are unable to bear the costly hepatitis treatment. They said that the private transfusion centres, which offered free transfusion services, did not screen blood.

During a campaign run by NWFP Safe Blood Transfusion Authority, it was learnt that 90 per cent of the blood transfusion centres had no clinical testing facilities or qualified staff. Some of these outlets had been closed down by officials concerned but they re-emerged under new names.

“Amendment in relevant laws has enabled us to register a case against owners of ill-equipped blood transfusion centres,” said an official of the blood transfusion authority. Stressing the need for further amendments, he said that the current law did not enable them to arrest those involved in the practice or file criminal cases against them.

Paediatricians told this correspondent that the children using a single blood transfusion centre remained relatively safe from contracting other diseases but those who visited different blood transfusion centres were more vulnerable to hepatitis.

“During initial stages of thalassaemia, the children need blood transfusion every three months, but they need transfusion once every month or even once every 15 days in advanced stages of the disease,” they said.

Sources in the health department said that upon the complaints about non-availability of screening kits for highly contagious diseases like HIV and hepatitis, NWFP Health Minister Inayatullah Khan ordered officials to ensure the supply of test kits to all blood banks in the province, adding that the government would not tolerate lethargy.

Sources said that even blood banks at public sector hospitals did not have screening facilities despite the fact that the provincial HIV/Aids Control Programme had provided them with blood screening kits.

Paediatricians said that children receiving blood at the district headquarters hospitals.

“We have purchased the kits but most of the DHQ hospitals have not collected them,” a health department official said.

He said that the department had approved the procurement of blood kits through Unicef at a cost of Rs16.4million during the current year.

He said that the government had recently launched a three-year project costing Rs3 million besides running a public awareness campaign on thalassaemia at the community level, adding that a ward would also be set up at the Lady Reading Hospital.