KARACHI, Nov 5: The Sindh Blood Transfusion Authority (SBTA) plans establishment of a centralised blood transfusion service that could cater to the needs of the entire province, Sindh health department officials told Dawn.

At present, the SBTA has been performing as a regulatory body to ensure standard blood transfusion service at blood banks. It is empowered to take action against any blood bank not maintaining the standards or defying the procedures set by the Authority.

Our primary function is to regulate functioning of blood banks in Sindh, and now we have plans to establish a centralised blood transfusion service that could arrange and facilitate blood donation and transfusion across the province, Dr Zahid Hasan Ansari, Secretary SBTA, said.

According to him, SBTA’s performance in ensuring safe blood transfusion has yielded better results. In this context, he pointed out that more than 100 blood banks with substandard service had been made to stop functioning anymore.

Out of the 225 blood banks existing in Sindh some two years back, only 57 had been fulfilling the SBTA standards and, therefore, registered accordingly. Another 32 had since been cleared would formally be registered soon, Dr Ansari said.

We have detected minor flaws in the standards of 30 more banks and could register them only when they improved the same to meet the set criteria.

Asked whether the SBTA had any plans to establish and run its own blood banks in the province as it was being done by the Punjab Institute of Blood Transfusion (PIBT), Dr Ansari said the authority’s primary task was to regulate blood banks which it was doing properly.

Experts blame the government for confining the status of SBTA to merely regulatory body at the time of establishing it in mid-1990s. The government established an authority to check and regulate the mushroom growth of second-rate blood banks and did not authorise it to establish its own blood bank. As such, SBTA’s performance is not below par, said Dr Tahir Shamsi, a senior hematologist.

He said the government should put blood-related health services on top of its priorities because they were meant to save many precious lives whenever the city was faced with outbreaks of life-threatening diseases and epidemics.

The SBTA’s scope should be widened so that it could establish its own blood banks across Sindh to provide better and prompt services in emergencies, Dr Shamsi said.

Experts recall that when the British rule was over, most blood transfusion and testing facilities in Sindh were better than they were in other provinces. In 1947, Pakistan had four blood banks – one each in Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore and Peshawar – but with the passage of time, both the blood banks in Sindh vanished. However, their contemporary in Punjab flourished and eventually became the Punjab Institute of Blood Transfusion which, besides regulating blood banks in that province, runs 33 blood banks of its own.

A health department official confirmed that there was not a single blood bank in Sindh which was owned and operated by the provincial government. The one at the Civil Hospital Karachi is being operated by the Patients Welfare Association, a private entity. In Hyderabad, the Liaquat University, which had received ample grants from the government, has purchased latest equipment for a modern blood bank. However, despite having all the related facilities, including blood separation which is essentially required in the present crisis created by the dengue incidence, the university has not yet decided to unpack the equipment for making use of them for the purpose.

Similarly, no such facility is being maintained by the provincial government in any other districts of Sindh.

The government has failed to understand that everywhere in the world, it is government that assumes the responsibility of blood transfusion for its citizens, said an expert.