More than 50 unsanitary blood collection stations across China
have been closed down, the Ministry of Health announced
yesterday.
The closures were yet another step in ongoing efforts to
safeguard a healthy blood supply. They follow checks started in May
by a task force jointly established by the Ministry of Health,
Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of Supervision and State Food
and Drug Administration.
159 blood collection stations and blood banks were randomly
selected and checked from more than 900 blood collectors and 36
blood producers across the country. The task force exposed illegal
or poor practices in 52 of the 159, officials said yesterday in
Beijing.
At the same time, local governments were urged to set up ongoing
inspections to ensure blood safety and improve management, said
Wang Yu, deputy director of the Ministry of Health's Medical Policy
Office.
Most of the stations shut down had poor hygiene conditions,
failed to give strict medical checks to donors or were involved in
organizing illegal blood selling.
The Lintong Blood Plasma Collection Station in northwest China's
Shaanxi
Province, for example, did not check the medical history of
blood donors, some of whom had Hepatitis B.
Meanwhile in Shanghai, police have detained 10 people suspected
of illegally organizing blood sales. Blood sales not only risk
spreading blood borne pathogens like HIV and HBV (the virus that
causes Hepatitis B), but exacerbate the ruthless exploitation of
the poor, Wang said.
Before the country began to screen blood for HIV in 1997, many
people, mostly poverty-stricken farmers, were infected. Since the
average incubation time of the virus is eight years, most of these
people are expected to develop AIDS in the near future.
Legislators have taken several steps to ensure better
implementation of the Blood Donation Law that came into effect in
1998 to reduce the system's reliance on the sale of blood and,
according to the Chinese Society of Blood Transfusion, 85 percent
of blood used in China in 2003 was collected from donors.
(China Daily October 21, 2004)