RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Sell­ing blood is il­le­gal and au­thor­i­ties are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing the sys­tem to pre­vent the prac­tice, Med­ical Di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Blood Trans­fu­sion Ser­vice (NBTS), Dr Shiv­ir Moo­sai, has warned.

His com­ments came as for­mer West In­dies wick­et­keep­er-bats­man Nicholas Pooran and Health Min­is­ter Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe launched a Na­tion­al Blood Do­na­tion dri­ve at the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal aimed at in­creas­ing vol­un­tary blood do­na­tion.

Speak­ing to the me­dia and ad­dress­ing con­cerns about re­ports of in­di­vid­u­als al­leged­ly sell­ing blood or so­lic­it­ing donors out­side health fa­cil­i­ties, Moo­sai said such prac­tices are un­law­ful.

“Sell­ing blood is il­le­gal. That can­not hap­pen,” he said.

Moo­sai ex­plained that every unit of blood col­lect­ed should be tracked through a rig­or­ous mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem.

“It is about us hav­ing what we call a haemovig­i­lance scheme. This is to track every unit of blood from the time it is do­nat­ed to the time it goes to a pa­tient. So if any prac­tices do ex­ist out­side the nor­mal realms, then it will be flagged up and then we tack­le it like that,” he said.

Moo­sai said do­nat­ed blood un­der­goes ex­ten­sive screen­ing be­fore it is cleared for use.

“Once donors are screened to make sure they are safe to do­nate, we test the blood for var­i­ous in­fec­tions and do spe­cial tests on the blood. Once it pass­es our safe­ty checks, then it is safe to use in the hos­pi­tal,” he ex­plained.

He said the NBTS is al­so seek­ing to ex­pand blood col­lec­tion ef­forts be­yond ur­ban cen­tres, not­ing that Ma­yaro will host its first-ever blood dri­ve in Au­gust, while Moru­ga re­cent­ly staged its in­au­gur­al blood do­na­tion cam­paign.

“We are try­ing to get a lot more blood dri­ves in­to the more rur­al, dif­fi­cult-to-ac­cess ar­eas be­cause blood do­na­tions shouldn’t just be for peo­ple who live in ur­ban ar­eas. It should be for every­one,” he said.

He added that chang­ing pub­lic at­ti­tudes to­ward blood do­na­tion re­mains one of the biggest chal­lenges.

Mean­while, Pooran, who sur­vived a near-fa­tal road ac­ci­dent in 2015 and re­quired blood trans­fu­sions dur­ing his re­cov­ery, said his per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence made it easy to sup­port the ini­tia­tive.

“For me per­son­al­ly, when we got the in­vi­ta­tion to join, it was re­al­ly spe­cial be­cause I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty as a young boy to un­der­stand the im­por­tance of blood do­na­tion through my ac­ci­dent as well,” Pooran said.

Pooran said in­creas­ing aware­ness among younger gen­er­a­tions could help cre­ate a stronger cul­ture of vol­un­tary do­na­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The Health Min­is­ter added that chang­ing pub­lic at­ti­tudes was crit­i­cal to ad­dress­ing chron­ic blood short­ages.

But he said leg­is­la­tion would not solve the prob­lem.

“We be­lieve that this is some­thing that needs to be changed. This is a cul­ture that needs to be changed.”

Ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter, T&T cur­rent­ly col­lects be­tween 19,000 and 20,000 units of blood an­nu­al­ly, far be­low the ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40,000 units re­quired to ad­e­quate­ly meet the coun­try’s needs. “There is a sig­nif­i­cant gap,” he ac­knowl­edged.

He ex­pressed con­fi­dence that on­go­ing part­ner­ships with busi­ness­es, non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, schools and pub­lic sec­tor agen­cies could help close the short­fall.

Bo­doe re­vealed that the Min­istry of Health has al­ready writ­ten to more than 140 or­gan­i­sa­tions, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice, the De­fence Force, Fire Ser­vice and teach­ing as­so­ci­a­tions, en­cour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in blood do­na­tion dri­ves.