Ludhiana, October 30
AIDS and hepatitis are assuming epidemic proportions in India. Transfusion of unsafe blood is said to be the major cause for the same. Quality blood and its components are as essential as its availability at the right time and in the right amount.

Making these observations in an interactive session on public awareness here today, Dr Amarjit Kaur, professor and head of the department of transfusion medicine, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital, said unsafe blood transfusion had not received much attention.

In India, blood transfusion services infrastructure is highly decentralised and lacks critical resources, mainly trained people, equipment and financial support. Exhorting members of the public to come forward for voluntary blood donation at regular intervals, Dr Amarjit Kaur said developed countries had decreased the risk of transmissible infections to almost zero with total dependence on voluntary blood donors.

“However, the proportion of blood collected from voluntary donors in India still remains low. The requirement of blood greatly exceeds the availability that has led to mushrooming of commercial blood banks. Professional blood donors should be shunned as directed by the Supreme Court in 1998.

“The strategies developed at the state or district level to educate and motivate people on voluntary blood donation need strict enforcement to decrease the deficit of blood,” said Dr Amarjit.

She explained that as per law, all blood units collected were screened for HIV, hepatitis- B, hepatitis-C, VDRL and malarial parasite. However, there were many other infections (viral, bacterial and parasitic), which were not screened because of their low incidence and high cost of testing. 

Mandi Gobindgarh, October 30
RIMT-IMCT students have won the Punjab Technical University Inter-College Basketball Championship held at the Saheed Udham Singh College of Engineering and Technology, Tangori campus. Giving this information to the press, the spokesperson of the institute Prof Gurvinder Bakshi said the team gave a wonderful performance.

The team was felicitated by the chairman of the RIMT Group Hukam Chand Bansal in the RIMT-IMCT campus. He congratulated the team and the coach Harjit Singh for their performance. He also announced that members of the winning team would be suitably rewarded for their effort on the annual function of the institute. The director-general of the institute Dr B.S. Bhatia said this victory had indeed reinforced their commitment to develop sports infrastructure and give more facilities to the students interested in sports. The director of the institute Dr Surinder Singh and principal of the RIMT Institute of Computer Technology Dr.S.N. Panda also congratulated the students.

In an exciting final, the team defeated the DAV College of Engineering and Technology, Jalandhar, (64-55) to clinch the title. In the finals, the top scorers for the champions were Nitin Uppal, Abhishek and Navdeep. The team remained unbeaten throughout the tournament.

In the pre-quaterfinals with Guru Nanak Dev Engineering College, the team won the match by huge margin (64-31), in which Abhishek Tessu and Navdeep were the main scorers. In the quarterfinals, the team defeated BBSB, Fatehgarh Sahib, (55-40) and the main scorers were Nitin and Baldeep. In the semifinal, which turned out to be an interesting and exhilarating game of the tournament, the team was able to ground the defending champions and the host, SUSCET, Tangori. The main scorers for the winners being Nitin Uppal and Abhishek Tessu.

The members of the winner team were Abhishek Tessu (captain), Nitin Uppal (vice-captain), Navdeep Dhillon, Baldeep Singh, Lovelesh Arora, Hitesh Gupta, Vianyak Verma, Mandeep Sidhu, Ranbeer Singh, Ravi Sharma, Ashish Bisht, Himanshu, Gagan Nanda Amit Kumar and Jagjeet Singh (team manager).

Ludhiana, October 30
More than 150 aspirants turned for the trials conducted by the Ludhiana office of the Punjab Sports Department here today at Guru Nanak Stadium to select the women players who will represent Ludhiana in the forthcoming Punjab State Games for women to be held at Amritsar from November 3 to 6.

Gianinder Singh Sandhu, district sports ofice, Ludhiana, said trials were held in disciplines of athletics, basketball, badminton, hockey, handball, kabddi, kho-kho, volleyball, lawn tennis, table tennis, swimming and gymnastics.

Coaches of the Ludhiana sports department supervised the aspirants before finalising the various teams for the forthcoming games.