LARKANA: Teams of the Sindh Blood Transfusion Authority (SBTA) and Sindh Aids Control Programme (SACP) carried out joint raids on several blood banks in the city on Monday and sealed three of them. A day earlier, 16 blood banks were sealed in Qambar town.

SBTA secretary Dr Zahid Ansari and SACP official Dr Yunis Chachar told the media on Monday that the laboratories being run by the Zulfikar Blood Bank, Murtaza Blood Bank and Bukhari Blood Bank were found lacking the prescribed criteria.

The officials, accompanied by district health officer and other staff, said that the sealed blood banks were found using inferior quality infrastructure and substandard chemicals.

They lacked the equipment and prescribed refrigerators required to keep blood samples safe, added the officials.

Dr Ansari said that the licences of the three banks had been suspended and they were told to satisfy the competent authority within the next four weeks that they were able to meet the criteria and observe the prescribed rules. Failing which, he said, their licences would stand cancelled.

He further told the media that a crackdown against the blood banks running their illegal business would continue not in Larkana division alone but also in other parts of the province.

On Sunday, the teams paid surprise visits to many blood banks in Qambar town and sealed 16 of them. Members of the teams said they found some blood transfusion staffers at their laboratories using one syringe for more than one individual and without supervision of a qualified doctor.

Meanwhile, Larkana Comm­issioner Inamullah Dharejo on Monday held a meeting with senior officials of the health department and medical institutions including Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto Medical University, Chandka Medical College and affiliated hospital and heads of the SBTA and SACP to discuss the issue of HIV/Aids cases (reportedly 49) recently emerged in the district.

The meeting discussed threadbare the cases and noted that HIV/Aids was diagnosed in the kidney patients who had been put on regular dialysis in the CMCH department of nephrology.

The meeting suspected that both registered and unregistered blood banks and laboratories were involved in spreading Aids and, as such, the crackdown launched against them a couple of days ago should continue.

Published in Dawn October 11th, 2016