Authorities manning the check-post on the border between Telangana and Maharashtra on NH-44 at Dollara village in Adilabad district, late on Tuesday, refused entry into the State of a vehicle carrying nearly 200 litres of expired blood plasma to an unnamed pharmaceutical company in Hyderabad.
The vehicle that was coming from a private blood bank in Yavatmal district headquarters in the neighbouring State had 1,043 bags of plasma, which was a Government of India supply and not for sale, manufactured in March 2018 and expired in February 2020.
The vehicle was intercepted and checked for proper documents for entering Telangana State at the check-post. “The driver could not produce proper documents or the name of the consignee. So we did not allow him inside our State with the dead material in the shape of plasma,” said Adilabad DSP N.S.V. Venkateshwar Rao.
“The authorities could have stumbled upon a racket involving blood banks and pharma companies. There is a lot of talk on finding a cure for COVID-19 using the plasma of cured patients,” observed a suspicious staffer at the check-post as he talked of his suspicion.
DMHO Thodasam Chandu conceded there was something wrong as the plasma was not being carried in a cold chain either, as per the protocol. Pathologist and former DMHO Rajeev Raju opined that it could either have been destined for some biomedical waste disposal unit in Hyderabad or for research.
“Transporting biomedical waste without proper documents is in violation of the Biomedical Waste Management Rules,” Dr. Raju pointed out. Needless to say use of expired plasma in research is also a crime.
