Siliguri, Oct. 19: Members of the Siliguri Welfare Organisation today demanded that camps be organised near each of the 14 government blood banks in north Bengal to examine the patients who were tested using the expired kits.

The demand comes a day after a Calcutta Police team yesterday seized the expired test kits sent back to the Regional Blood Transfusion Centre (RBTC) at the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital (NBMCH) following a circular about last month’s test kit scam.

Of the 14,400 faulty kits sent to the centre from Calcutta before the problem was detected, as many as 5,320 had been used by the blood banks to test donated units for Hepatitis B and C contamination.

“Before the scam came to light, these faulty kits have been used to test thousands of blood units in north Bengal,” said Dipankar Chakrobarty, the secretary of SWO. “It has thus become imperative to check the blood of these patients and, if found infected, be given whatever appropriate treatment is necessary.”

The organisation members insisted that as the respective blood banks keep records of the recipients it would not be tough to locate them.

Authorities at RBTC, however, appeared to have taken a wait and watch policy. “As the seized kits are yet to be tested, it would be wrong to say that all of them were faulty,” said Mridumoy Das, the director of the RBTC.