More than 50 dirty or illegal blood collection stations across
the country have been shut down.
The closures were yet another step in ongoing efforts to safeguard
the blood supply. They follow checks started in May by a task force
set up by several ministries.
The task force checked 159 blood collection stations and blood
banks randomly selected 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 Wednesday in Beijing. The task force was jointly
established by the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Public
Security, the Ministry of Supervision and State Food and Drug
Administration.
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 Medical Policy Office of the
Ministry of Health.
Most of the stations that will be shut down had poor hygiene
conditions, failed to give strict medical checks to donors or were
involved in organizing illegal blood sales.
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 were Hepatitis B carriers.
Meanwhile in Shanghai, police have detained 10 people suspected of
illegally organizing blood sales.
Blood sales not only risk spreading viruses, which damage health
and families, but exacerbate the ruthless exploitation of the poor,
Wang said.
Before the country began to test blood for HIV in 1997, many
people, mostly poverty-stricken farmers, were infected.
Since the average incubation time of the HIV virus is eight years,
most of those people are expected to develop full blown AIDS in the
near future.
Legislators have taken several steps to ensure a better
implementation of the Chinese Blood Donation Law which came into
effect in 1998 to ban illegal blood sales.
The ban could prevent the spread of HIV and other viruses, such as
Hepatitis B, that can be transmitted through blood.
Statistics from the Chinese Society of Blood Transfusion shows that
85 percent of the blood used in China was collected from donors in
2003. The rest comes from blood sellers.
(China Daily October 21, 2004)