Probe indicts several staff for HIV+ blood transfusion
New Rules Planned For Blood Banks
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai 29.01.2019
The state government has decided to take strict action against the healthcare professionals responsible for the mix-up that led to a pregnant woman being given HIV-infected blood in a Sivaganga hospital and to formulate rules that will clearly fix responsibility for every step of the blood collection, storage and transfusion process.
The six-member inquiry committee headed by the additional director of medical services, Dr S Madhavi, indicted the district blood bank professionals, staff and voluntary testing centre counsellor in Sivakasi, and the Chennai-based monitoring officers working with the Tamil Nadu AIDS Control Society.
A senior health official said, “We have an existing guideline which tells blood bank professionals what they should do. The new one will fix responsibilities on who should conduct camps, who should draw blood and who should maintain cold chain.”
“We have suspended two lab technicians, Valarmathi and Ganesh Babu, along with lab counsellor Ramesh. We also found that the seniors they reported to, including senior blood bank officials and district monitoring officials, were negligent. We will be initiating action against all of them,” said a senior official.
The counsellor was aware of the HIV status of the donor in 2016 but did not persistently call the donor or escalate the case to higher officials when unable to get in touch with the donor. District monitoring officials, who should have sought regular status reports from the counsellor, did not follow up on the case.
Lab technicians say they tested the blood before labelling it as safe, the committee said and added that the kits used by the government were provided by National AIDS Control Organisation and did not fail quality tests.
“In this case, we have reason to believe that the tests were never done and the blood bank managers too failed to monitor blood safety,” the official said.
New Rules Planned For Blood Banks
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Chennai 29.01.2019
The state government has decided to take strict action against the healthcare professionals responsible for the mix-up that led to a pregnant woman being given HIV-infected blood in a Sivaganga hospital and to formulate rules that will clearly fix responsibility for every step of the blood collection, storage and transfusion process.
The six-member inquiry committee headed by the additional director of medical services, Dr S Madhavi, indicted the district blood bank professionals, staff and voluntary testing centre counsellor in Sivakasi, and the Chennai-based monitoring officers working with the Tamil Nadu AIDS Control Society.
A senior health official said, “We have an existing guideline which tells blood bank professionals what they should do. The new one will fix responsibilities on who should conduct camps, who should draw blood and who should maintain cold chain.”
“We have suspended two lab technicians, Valarmathi and Ganesh Babu, along with lab counsellor Ramesh. We also found that the seniors they reported to, including senior blood bank officials and district monitoring officials, were negligent. We will be initiating action against all of them,” said a senior official.
The counsellor was aware of the HIV status of the donor in 2016 but did not persistently call the donor or escalate the case to higher officials when unable to get in touch with the donor. District monitoring officials, who should have sought regular status reports from the counsellor, did not follow up on the case.
Lab technicians say they tested the blood before labelling it as safe, the committee said and added that the kits used by the government were provided by National AIDS Control Organisation and did not fail quality tests.
“In this case, we have reason to believe that the tests were never done and the blood bank managers too failed to monitor blood safety,” the official said.
No comments:
Post a Comment