PESHAWAR, Sept 12: The provincial health department is yet to formulate a law to check the mushroom growth of blood banks, laboratories and clinics, an official said. The provincial government had established the health regulatory authority (HRA) under the North West Frontier Province Medical and Health Institutions and Regulation of Health Care Services Ordinance 2002, with a view to curbing malpractices in the health sector, but after four years, rules are yet to be framed, the official said.

The Safe Blood Transfusion Act (SBA) passed by the NWFP Assembly in 1999, was aimed to check and regulate the functioning of the blood banks and pave the way for installation of incinerators at hospitals, besides other measures to help check the spread of HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B and C.

“There is duplication of activities, because both the HRA and the SBA were required to check and regulate the activities of the blood banks,” he said, adding that in such situation, the owners of the private sector clinics, diagnostic centres and hospitals are playing with the lives of the people.

“Ninety per cent of the hospitals in private sector are not conducting HIV and hepatitis tests to the patients before operation.

Only the public sector hospitals are doing these test, because every year, they are supplied with 80,000 kits each for HIV and hepatitis tests free of cost,” official said.

Citing a monitoring report of the Peshawar-based health facilities in public sector, he said that 90 per cent had been found as extremely dangerous and run by unqualified people.

“We registered cases at least against 25 persons. All were released by the local court, because there were no rules,” he said, adding that only 31 blood banks in the NWFP and Fata were following the instruction of carrying out free HIV and hepatitis B test.

From next year, hepatitis C tests would also be made compulsory, because the government will supply free kits for the same, he added.

The official said that rules for both the HRA and SBA be notified immediately with a view to empower them.

Secondly, he said that there is a need to draw a line between the functioning of both bodies.