Family Health Organization Inc.

Blood Safety Initiative

1. Establish an entity supervised by a public private board.
2.  Assure safe and adequate blood (blood products) to ALL patients in the province at a reasonable cost through a Volunteer Donor Program.
3. Mandatory registration of ALL blood banks operating in the province through legislation to operate in the province.
4. Develop guidelines/protocols and standard operating procedures which can be gradually phased in. The requirements of equipment, director and personnel should be established. There may be different levels of blood banks according to the services they provide and the requirements to operate will be specified to their level of operations.
5. No screening and blood testing kits could be sold in the province unless certified & tested by a regulatory authority against standard minimal requirements at the State of the Art central reference laboratory.
6. Central data bank (Computerized Management Information System) should collect mandatory information of ALL donors (family, volunteer, professional etc), recipients and the results of the screening test & the devices used for testing in the entire province.
7. Educate health care professionals about appropriate use of blood & blood products. This should be carried out by making it part of the curriculum of all medical colleges, nursing schools & other allied health care professionals in a symmetric manner through an educational program activity on a continuous basis.
8. All district blood centers should develop friends & donor organizations through which outreach activity be carried out to support the center through public education, fund raising to support the centers and volunteer donors to donate blood.
9. All major hospitals should have transfusion committees which monitor appropriate use of blood and blood products and documentation of adverse effects.

Maqbool Arshad, MD

Chair, APPNA Hepatitis C Initiative