25 blood banks penalised by Food and Drugs Control Authority

Blood banks in Gujarat are increasingly under the lens of Food and Drugs Control Authority (FDCA) for failure to maintain testing standards, documentation and technical procedures.

Since October 2016, 25 blood banks in Gujarat have been penalised over such issues, said FDCA Deputy Commissioner V R Shah. Severe action has been taken against these institutions, both public and private, and in some instances their license suspended up to a year.

Three hospitals penalised, one license cancelled

Punitive action has been taken against three hospitals, including one from Ahmedabad. AMC-run LG Hospital faced punitive measures after an inspection in March 2017. The blood bank of the hospital was asked to shut down for two months from January to March 2018.

Two other public-sector hospitals that faced punitive action were GMERS Valsad MCH and GMERS Dharpur in Patan, inspected in March and April 2017 respectively. While operations of Valsad hospital's blood bank was shut for four months, from September 2017 to January 2018, the blood bank at GMERS Dharpur has been shut for close to one-and-a-half years since January 2018.

Gujarat FDCA, along with the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) and experts from the Gujarat State Council of Blood Transfusion (GSCBT) conducted 41 joint audits in 2016, 86 in 2017 and 51 in 2018, bringing the total to 178 inspections.

CDSCO officials said, "While 25 institutions are regular defaulters and serious note had been taken of their shortcomings in providing safe blood to patients, many more blood banks had been reprimanded for shoddy practices and poor documentation."

Problems plaguing blood banks

Technicians, especially in smaller and peripheral districts, join blood banks fresh out of college and get trained on the job. Many of these smaller blood banks don't even have senior staff to supervise them. This is because trained staff either leave to go to bigger institutions or hospitals where they work as paramedical staff.

Dhaval Shah from Red Cross, while explaining the process of blood collection to distribution, said, said, "Problems persist at multiple levels. It starts with untrained staff, testing donors' haemoglobin level, self-affidavit of donors' disease history, indiscipline in transporting blood and refrigeration of different components of bloods at different temperatures. Finally, things frequently go wrong in matching blood types of donors and recipients."

Financial strain on blood banks

Dhruv Gupta, who operates a blood bank aggregator firm, said, "While everyone wants to blame blood banks for not maintaining quality, nobody wants to talk about financial aspects as it is considered immoral. Even charitable institutions like blood banks need money and government policies on fixing price of blood, and lack of testing infrastructure, is causing problems. While NAT (Nucleic Acid Testing) test costs Rs 800, adding refrigeration, storage, staff and transport costs takes the price of a unit of blood beyond the cap of Rs 1,450."

Price of whole blood is regulated at Rs 1,050 for government blood banks and Rs 1,450 for private banks. Most blood banks Mirror talked to said price cap makes it difficult for them to operate.

25 blood banks are from 15 districts
Of the 25 blood banks that were penalised by regulatory bodies, four each are from Vadodara and Surendranagar, three from Ahmedabad while two each from Rajkot and Porbandar. One blood bank each was penalised from Dahod, Anand, Botad, Valsad, Patan, Bhavnagar, Amreli, Banaskantha, Jamnagar and Navsari.

There are 157 blood banks in Gujarat of which 28 are run by the government,16 by the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS), 25 by private bodies and 89, the largest number, by charitable institutions.