17 units from donors tested positive for HCV since Jan

Aparna Banerji

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Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, May 10

While the local Civil Hospital’s blood bank issued 429 blood units to patients receiving transfusions at the Thalassemia ward from January til now, as many as 35 of them tested positive in March.

However, of the 2,800 units of blood tested at the hospital since January, as many as 17 from donors had tested positive for HCV.

While the hospital puts the high number of infections among thalassemic patients to the repeated blood transfusions received by thalassemia patients, the District Blood Bank was getting HCV prevalence among 1.2 per cent of its blood donors. Of the 17 tested positive, as many as six tested positive in January, three in February, two in March and six in April.

Notably, while of all the societies providing free voluntary free treatment to thalassemia patients in the state, the Jalandhar-based Thalssemic Children Welfare Society saw TS Bhatia (78) retired government official, working to provide free treatment to thalassemic patients for the past nine years.

With the fresh controversy, a unit which has been known all these years for its selfless services – Jalandhar has the only Thalssemia ward at the Government Civil Hospital in the state – to thalassemia patients have suddenly found itself on the wrong side of the fence.

However, with the paediatrician of the Civil Hospital mostly remain unavailable for patients and the BTO being in charge only of transfusions, it was on the NGO running the ward that the task to keep the unit afloat fell. While the Jalandhar unit at least got its patients tested - with visible HCV prevalence – twice since January this year, the data regarding the HCV positivity in other state units has not even been made public so far.

Sources at the hospital said, “It is only due to the huge amount of patients testing positive in bulk at one go that the unit has garnered attention. HCV positivity across the state – even among non-thalassemia patients is shooting through the roof. But no one has bothered. In such a scenario the complicit silence of the health establishment in general rather than two retired men trying to keep thalssemia patients treated for free, must be blamed.”

While the duo – TS Bhatia and MS Thapar – have ensured free treatment for all government school students receiving free treatment at the thalassemia unit, they also ensured subsidised testing and free medicines for patients receiving treatment at the hospital. While the ward only had a nurse in the name of staff, the paediatrician - as alleged by parents Sarbjit Singh, Kishan Thapar among others, often fails to attend patients and even during a reaction, asks them to go home or refers them elsewhere.

The NGO has now demanded free treatment for patients under age 14 under the CM relief fund for HCV patients after the incident.

BTO Gagandeep Singh said: “Our job has just been to provide blood units to the thalassemia unit. As far as HCV positivity is concerned, among all donors being received at the blood bank, it is 1.2 per cent. Our blood is duly being checked and double checked after March 27. All due measures are being taken to ensure that the blood provided to patients is clean and properly checked.”