In an effort to allay fears of people and reassure them about the quality of blood in government hospital blood banks of Virudhunagar district, all 464 bags of blood in the four primary blood banks have been screened for a second time for infection.
Tamil Nadu State AIDS Control Society Project Director K. Senthil Raj said on Thursday that 131 bags in Sivakasi, 138 in Virudhunagar, 90 in Aruppukottai and 105 in Rajapalayam GHs were screened by technicians from Regional Medical Laboratory. He added that blood bags in private blood banks would also be tested.
After conducting an hour-long enquiry with officials of blood bank and senior medical officers at the GH here, Dr. Senthil Raj said that people need not have even the slightest fear about the quality of blood from GH blood banks.
He said that three types of quality audit were being done for all the 89 government blood banks in the State. “The Chief Medical Officer of the GH makes a vertical audit of randomly picked blood bag every month,” he added.
“Once in a quarter, the National AIDS Control Society-designated blood bank of Christian Medical College in Vellore sends blood samples to the government blood banks which is tested,” he said. The reports from blood banks were verified by the CMC authorities. Thirdly, 1% of blood bags that were labelled safe by government blood banks were sent to regional labs, where the Department of Microbiology cross-checked the test results.
Tamil Nadu has the highest number of voluntary blood donors and the safety of blood is ensured at the labs. Blood given to all 10 lakh pregnant women and 15 lakh general patients in the State, and 8 lakh blood units taken from donors undergoes stringent quality control with a fool-proof system, he claimed.
A five-member high-level expert committee constituted by the State government would conduct a thorough enquiry into the incident of HIV-infected blood from Sivakasi blood bank that was transfused to a pregnant woman in Sattur on December 3, from Friday.
