KARACHI, Dec 18: The federal health ministry will set up a National Blood Transfusion Services (NBTS), which will supervise and monitor all blood related services across the country, a provincial health department official told Dawn.
The decision to establish the NBTS was taken unanimously during a conference in Islamabad held under the auspices of National AIDS Control Programme.
The health ministry will run and supervise the NBTS, with a Rs320 million grant from the German government. It will work simultaneously in all the provinces with coordination among the blood transfusion authorities. “During the meeting we also formulated a national guideline for blood transfusion services including procedures, quality control, reagents and equipment etc,” Dr Zahid Ansari, chief of Sindh Blood Transfusion Authority (SBTA), told Dawn. He said the NBTS would work in accordance with the principles and criteria set by the World Health Organisation and the guidelines followed in all aspects.
He said provincial managers and leading hematologists were invited to the conference, who formulated the guidelines unanimously, which would be applicable to the whole country after approval by the competent authority.
The NBTS will be established in two phases. In thefirst phase it would be networked and coordinated in Punjab and NWFP and in the second, Sindh and Balochistan would be included in the exercise.
The officials did not give any timeframe, but it is expected to take about six months.
The NBTS will check all blood banks registered with the provincial blood transfusion authorities and and where required, supply whole blood or particles to registered blood banks in need. It will be run with public partnership and all public and private blood banks will get fresh guidelines to ensure blood screening was done in accordance with WHO techniques and the kits used were also those approved by the WHO.
The ministry had also set up a technical sub-committee comprising Professor Khalid Hassan of Islamabad Blood Transfusion Authority, Dr Zahid Ansari from Sindh, Prof Yaseen Lodhi from Punjab, Dr Nadeem Shaikh from Balochistan, Prof Fazal Raziq from NWFP, Irum Gilani from AJK, Asma Bukhari of National Aids Control Programme and Dr Tahir Shamsi of Bismillah Taqi Centre of Blood Diseases.
The federal health secretary will preside over a meeting with all the provincial chiefs of blood transfusion services and leading hematologists in Karachi next month to officially announce the project.
