Recipients of unscreened blood could be infected with hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV and cytomegalo virus, experts said.

They said the private blood banks often draw blood from donors who have disease and recipients of the blood run the risk of being infected with that disease. They also said the blood from the private blood banks are, in most cases, the blood of professional donors.

Thousands of patients have been infected with diseases because of this, said Prof Nazrul Islam, chief of the virology department in Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU).

"We received many patients with hepatitis B, C and even HIV which they got from unsafe blood transfusion," he said.

"After screening, a bag of blood might cost up to Tk 1800 while unscreened blood could be bought for Tk 200 to Tk 500," a physician of Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMCH) said.

This correspondent visited the Diagnosis and Pathology Center at 166/A, Lake Circus, Dolphin lane, Kalabagan in the city where they illegally sell blood.

When asked for six bags of O positive blood, the manager of the centre, refusing to give out his name, said, "We can give you each bag at Tk 800. But if you want us to test the blood for HIV and hepatitis, it would cost Tk 1800 for each bag. Or else, we would just perform the grouping, cross-matching, HBs, Ag and VDRL tests."

When asked, the manager admitted that the professional donors from whom they collect the blood might have deadly diseases like HIV and hepatitis.

There are about 150 blood banks operational in the capital and around 500 outside it, concerned sources said.

"We know that 29 percent of professional donors have hepatitis B, 3.8 percent have hepatitis C and 30 percent have syphilis," a DMCH physician said citing a recent survey.

A large quantity of blood at the blood banks of hospitals comes from poor people. A number of them are intravenous drug users who sell their blood to meet their drug habit money.

Experts say at least five tests are required to obtain blood safely from a donor, excluding cross-matching and group-matching tests. The tests are hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV, malaria and syphilis. In most cases, illegal private blood banks do not perform those tests but they mark the bags that the tests were conducted.

"They probably conduct only the group-matching test as it is easy to perform," Magistrate Keramot Ali, who has been raiding the illegal blood banks, said.

The blood business in private sector is booming as government hospitals fail to provide the required amount of blood. The DMCH blood centre alone needs around 100 bags a day but it can only provide 40 bags.

Describing his experience, Keramot Ali said he found private blood banks not even preserving the blood properly. "They preserve the blood in a regular refrigerator whereas special refrigerators are required," he said adding, "The environment of the private blood banks is very dirty."

"Even the reagent they use to identify the blood group had past its expiry date in a number of blood banks," he said.

The mobile court discovered many blood banks that do not have approval from the director general of health and in a number of cases they even failed to show their trade licence, the magistrate said.

According to the mobile court sources, dishonest businessmen, most of them retired doctors of blood collection centres in government hospitals, are directly or indirectly involved with illegal blood banks. They allegedly have underhand dealings with concerned government high officials.

"What the mobile court is doing is good but only Tk 50,000 fine is not enough punishment for the culprits," Prof Nazrul Islam said.

"An unauthorised blood businessman can ruin a person's life. They can infected someone with virus like HIV," he said adding, "They have already infected thousands of people, so the government needs to monitor these businesses strictly."