State to supply packed red blood cells to patients

KOLKATA: With an aim of transfusing appropriate components to all Thalassemia patients across the state, the Health department has decided to supply packed red blood cells (PRBC) to all such patients.

PRBC will be issued from various blood centres such as Blood Component Separation Units (BCSU) and also non-BCSU centers. According to a recent Health department

order, all non-BCSU blood centres will receive PRBC from a BCSU through bulk transfer of components. All non-BCSU blood centres have

been tagged with BCSU for uniform and uninterrupted supply of PRBC throughout the state.

Health department has laid down certain guidelines in order to implement this programme.

All the Thalassemia units will provide a sub-division wise updated list of transfusion dependent Thalassemia patients to the

concerned authorities of the hospital and its blood centre where the transfusion of the said patients is supposed to be given. This is necessary to evaluate the actual load of beneficiaries and also to assess the requirement of component inventory to be made available at the

concerned blood center for transfusion beforehand. The Health department has already introduced mechanism so that patients suffering from

thalassemia, haemophilia,

sickle cell diseases no longer require to visit the city hospitals and appear before a specific committee to get a 'disability certificate' as the state health department has simplified the process of issuance of the certificates.

These patients are now able to avail 'physically challenged' certificates from the local thalassemia control unit. State health department had issued a directive in this regard.

In Bengal, there are around 60,000 thalassemia patients while around 1,500 patients are affected with haemophilia. The number of patients suffering from sickle cell disease in Bengal would be around 1 lakh. These patients normally avail free of cost treatment from nearby district or sub-divisional hospitals or medical colleges.