As many as 36 HIV positive cases were detected at private Bukhari Blood Bank during 2015 along with 288 Hepatitis B cases, 399 Hepatitis C, 20 syphilis and 11 cases of malaria.
As many as 16,153 individual blood donors were screened during the same period who came to donate their blood for various surgeries of their relatives or other dear ones. This blood bank operates inside the Shaikh Zayed Hospital for Women and Teaching Block of the Chandka Medical College Hospital since last six years. In Teaching Block, 8,727 donors arrived out of which they found 422 blood packs reactive, 18 were detected infected with HIV, 160 hepatitis B, 217 were suffering from hepatitis C, 17 from syphilis and nine from malaria. In Shaikh Zayed Hospital for Women, 7,426 blood donors came to donate their blood out of which 525 blood bags were detected reactive, 18 were found suffering from HIV, 128 had hepatitis B, 182 were infected with hepatitis C, five were suffering from syphilis and only two had malaria.
These donors belonged to upper Sindh which shows that these dreaded and killer diseases are constantly penetrating into the populace without brake despite spending of billions of rupees annually over their treatment by the Sindh government out of tax payer’s hard earned money. These figures were obtained from just one private blood bank and, according to information, there were more than 75 private blood banks and labs operating in entire Larkana and Qambar-Shahdadkot districts legally or illegally.
Another factor, which has been constantly ignored, is the proper working of preventive side. The district health officers throughout the province have been engaged for polio eradication and EPI jobs but they have forgotten their primary duties of taking all out preventive measures against spreading of these diseases to either halt them or prevented from spreading rapidly.
Dr Ghulam Shabir Shaikh, Associate Professor of Pathology, Benazir Bhutto Medical University, Larkana, told PPI that there could be no improvement until and unless contract and adhoc system was eliminated in provincial AIDS control programme and Sindh Blood Transfusion Authority. He said that DHOs in the province should also be geared up to urgently address their basic responsibilities on priority basis so as to stop spreading of these dangerous diseases which were regularly rising.