A blood donation camp

Siliguri, Feb. 1: The National AIDS Control Organisation has framed new guidelines under which voluntary blood donors found HIV-positive will be called, counselled, tested further and, if required, offered treatment.

Till now, all collections went through unlinked anonymous testing before units contaminated with HIV or any other germ were destroyed.

“We have issued a circular to make this option available to donors from January,” said R.S. Shukla, the ex-officio secretary and project director of the West Bengal State AIDS Prevention and Control Society. “For this, counsellors have been appointed at all district-level government blood banks.”

Shukla said if a blood unit collected is reactive to HIV antibodies, the donor would be traced, requested to visit either the blood bank or an Integrated Counselling and Testing Centre (ICTC) and tested twice more to confirm the status. “If these tests are positive, the person would be offered free treatment.”

For this the state AIDS society had to recruit over 100 lab technicians and counsellors to man the blood banks and ICTCs in Bengal.

“We were given the responsibility, through public private partnership, to select, screen and appoint these people,” said Kingsuk Mishra, the director of Bhoruka Public Welfare Trust, which has been involved in blood banking for 30 years. Training will be provided by the society at medical colleges and Institute of Cooperative Training, in Calcutta.

Bengal is the foremost blood donating state in the country, with units collected touching around 80 per cent of the annual requirement, compared to the national average of 52 per cent.

A total of 26 counsellors are working in north Bengal for the region’s six blood banks and about 20 ICTCs.

Mridumoy Das, the director of the regional blood transfusion centre at North Bengal Medical College and Hospital, said since January, the unit of one exchange donor had tested positive. “We will have to trace him in South Dinajpur and ask him to visit the counselling centre.”

Das said last year, between 0.3 to 1 per cent of the 10,000 units of blood collected turns out to be HIV positive.