Poison bank

Blood bags seized from a blood bank running in violation of regulations at Mohakhali in the capital. Photo: Banglar Chokh

A mobile court yesterday raided a blood bank in the capital's Mohakhali to find it operating in violation of safety standards, endangering thousands of lives, and punished six people including its four owners.  
Led by AHM Anwar Pasha, an executive magistrate of the Rapid Action Battalion, it caught red-handed an agent collecting blood from a drug addict there.

It also found “un-examined” blood being given to a cancer patient at the blood bank, Rogi Kallan Blood Bank and Day Care Centre.
The blood bank is just 300 yards from the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) responsible for monitoring the activities of blood banks and transfusion centres.  
According to the licence rules, an authorised blood bank must recruit doctors, nurses and technicians to test blood for at least five diseases -- AIDS, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, syphilis and malaria -- before a blood transfusion.   
But Rogi Kallan Blood Bank, which obtained its licence in 2009, had been running without any doctors and nurses and used to make fake test reports with forged signatures of physicians.
The blood bank's owners -- Rabiul Islam, 40, Ripon Uddin, 35, Saidul Islam, 35, Abdul Aziz, 32 -- and Kalu Mia, 42, an agent, were jailed for two years for the offences, while lab operator Iqbal Kabir, 22, was sentenced to a year in prison.
The court also seized 32 bags of blood and sealed the blood bank in what was the second such drive conducted in less than four months, exposing the fact that some fraudulent people are running blood banks and transfusion centres in the city in violation of laws and required safety standards.
Swapan Kumar Tapadar, deputy director (hospital) of DGHS, told The Daily Star last night that they have not enough manpower to monitor the activities of over 2000 hospitals, clinics and blood banks in the capital.
Despite the acute manpower shortage, they monitor hospitals, clinics and blood banks “as much as possible” and inspection is a must before issuance and renewal of licence, he said.
Being tipped-off, the mobile court carried out the drive. It saw Kalu Mia collecting blood from a drug addict.
Sixty-five-year-old cancer patient Tajul Sheikh at the time was being injected with blood that had not been tested for the diseases and a staff of the blood bank was selling a bag of blood to an attendant of a patient of National Institute of Traumatology Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation (Pongu Hospital) with a test report, the executive magistrate said.
The court found that the report bore a forged signature of a doctor.  
Quizzed about the matter, another staff Iqbal confessed to making the report without any test on instructions of the owners, Anwar Pasha said.
The sentences were handed down as per the Safe Blood Transfusion Act, 2002.
The owners have committed crimes by running the blood bank in an unhealthy environment without the availability of doctors, nurses and efficient technicians round the clock and live-saving equipment, the magistrate said.  
The blood bank had operated even before obtaining the licence, local people said, with a big signboard hung on the building along the main road, which houses the storage.
Majnu Sheikh, son of Tajul, the cancer patient from Manikganj, told a correspondent of The Daily Star, who was present there during the raid, that his father had been undergoing cancer treatment at Mohakhali Cancer Hospital for the last one month and on Wednesday doctors told the family to arrange for an immediate blood transfusion.
“Within a few minutes, a man came to me and said he would manage blood,” he said, adding that he had given Tk 1,700 to the man for blood.
Regarding blood collection from drug addicts, Abdul Aziz, one of the owners, said people usually did not come to the blood bank on their own and so they used to get blood donors through agents like Kalu.
“We are aware that most of the donors are drug addicts but we have nothing to do since 'normal' people do not come here,” he said.
He, however, claimed that technicians usually carried out some “essential tests” before selling blood.
Another owner Rabiul Islam said the blood bank usually collected and sold 10-15 bags of blood daily. They bought one bag of blood of positive groups for Tk 350 while negative groups for Tk 700 but sold one bag at Tk 1,000 to Tk 2,500.
The Rab executive magistrate said law enforcers had sealed 28 such blood banks and transfusion centres -- some licensed while some undocumented -- mostly in the capital. As many as 54 people were also sentenced to different terms and fined in the last five years.
A mobile court in March raided Dhaka Blood Centre in the capital's Bakshibazar, sealed it and sentenced three persons to different jail terms.
The highest punishment given in the drives was two-year imprisonment.
A total of 77 licensed private blood banks and transfusion centres are now operating across the country, sources said.