KARACHI: Seven regional blood transfusion centres for Sindh
By Mukhtar Alam
KARACHI, March 9: Sindh may establish seven regional blood transfusion centres with the financial and technical support of Germany, said officials in the provincial blood transfusion agency.
It is learnt that the German Development Bank (Kfw) and German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) are at present working on a plan to establish regional blood transfusion centres in the four provinces and Azad Jammu Kashmir to ensure supply of safe blood to patients. If things go according to plan, the project will pickup in a month or so, said a source privy to the relevant feasibility study.
A team of representatives from German agencies and National Aids Control Programme (NACP) Islamabad completed survey of various blood transfusion services in Karachi recently and indicated that the proposed blood transfusion centres could be established at some government premises, either by upgrading a few existing blood banks or establishing entirely new centres on lands available with referral hospitals in strategic areas of the province.
A briefing was also held at Sindh Blood Transfusion Authority (SBTA), which was attended by senior officials of Sindh Health Department, Dr Imran Masud, Technical Adviser to the German agencies, Dr Omer Farooq Kundi of NACP and Professor Smit Sabinga.
Making a presentation on the working and future programmes of the provincial transfusion authority, Secretray SBTA Dr Zahid Hasan Ansari, said that in order to ensure safe blood supply to patients, efforts were underway to enhance voluntary and regular blood donations in the province.
However, there was need to procure equipment and supplies for processing, storage and transportation of blood, which involved the provision of regular budget for screening of five diseases (HIV, HBV, HCV, syphilis and Malaria) to ensure sustainable service and better results, besides capacity building of blood bank staff.
Dr Ansari said public sector teaching hospitals, district hospitals and taluka/tehsil hospitals needed between 1,000 to 1,900 blood units daily. He suggested regional transfusion centres with the support of the German government could be established in the first phase at Karachi which would have three centres. Hyderabad, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas and Nawabshah would have one centre each.
Dr Omer Farooq, told Dawn on Wednesday that the safe blood transfusion wing of the NACP had initiated a plan to set up regional and centralised blood centres for state of the art screening of blood received from donors and effective monitoring and timely and safe blood transfusion.
The two German organisations, Germany-GTZ and Kfw, had completed their initial meetings with officials in the provinces and were keen to provide funds for the proposed centralised transfusion centres and extend cooperation in the training component of the project, he added.
Under the project the regional centres would be funded for five years by foreign agencies and thereafter it would be the respective governments in the provinces that would sustain the centres.
He informed that the fund and technical cooperation agencies of Germany had indicated that at present work to set up 28 regional centres through out the country would be undertaken.
The number of proposed centres is: Sindh-7, Punjab-8, Balochsitan-3, NWFP-7 and AJK-3. A consensus seminar involving representatives of various institutions is being held on March 14 in Islamabad, following which formal development strategies at the level of governments would be shaped, he said.
