Punjab Minister for Specialized Healthcare & Medical Education (SH&ME) Kh. Salman Rafique has said that provision of healthy blood is the basic right of every patient & keeping in view the importance of this fact a system is being evolved to provide screened & healthy blood to the patients admitted in the private hospitals from the public sector blood banks. He said that this system would not only be helpful to provide healthy blood to the patients but it would also discourage the business of sub-standard & inadequate blood banks. He disclosed that instead of the patient, the private hospital would be responsible to ensure provision of blood for which these hospitals can go in MOU with the public sector blood banks. A committee is being constituted to finalize the procedure for this purpose.
He stated this while presiding over a meeting of Punjab Blood Transfusion Authority (PBTA) to review the various steps for improving the blood transfusion service in the committee room of Institute of Blood Transfusion, here today. Secy. PBTA Dr Muhammad Athar, Additional Secy. Technical SH&ME Dr Salman Shahid, members of the board, representatives of public as well as private hospitals/blood banks & the representatives of different thalassemia foundations, Punjab Thalassemia Prevention Program (PTPP) & PITB attended the meeting. The participants of the meeting presented proposals for improving the blood transfusion facilities in the province & appreciated government’s efforts in this regard. On this occasion, Kh. Salman Rafique said that Punjab Government has made legislation on Punjab Blood Transfusion Act 2016 for establishing an efficient system to ensure provision of screened & healthy blood to the patients for which PBTA has also been established. The meeting has decided that the blood banks of newly established medical colleges of Sialkot, Sargodha, Sahiwal, DG Khan, Gujranwala & Gujrat would soon be linked with the Punjab Institute of Blood Transfusion to improve their working. Kh. Salman Rafique said that in near future more regional blood centres would be set up in other divisional headquarters on the pattern of RBC’s of Multan & Bahawalpur. The Minister said that RBC’s of Multan & Bahawalpur are the state of the art centres, performing with excellence. The Minister directed that technical committee should immediately be constituted which should give recommendations within a month for improving the blood screening procedure, the committee would be consisting of senior haematologists & representatives of Hepatitis Control Program would also be member of the committee. Kh. Salman further said that all the blood banks would be interlinked through a software which has been prepared by Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) & this program is already running successfully in the Punjab Institute of Cardiology. He said that this system would generate a central database of blood collected from the donors & it can be provided to the patients in any emergency situation. Kh. Salman Rafique further said that additional blood at the blood banks could also be provided to the different foundations for the Thalassemia patients. For this purpose a technical committee would be constituted to decide the SOP’s & GOR’s in which the representatives of Thalassemia foundations also be included. This committee would work under the Chairmanship of Director Punjab Institute of Blood Transfusion, the Minister added.