New test introduced at Blood Bank

Jan 27, 2009 News

As part of efforts to ensure that Guyanese continue receiving safe blood, the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) has introduced Chagas testing as part of its blood screening exercise.
Chagas is a tropical parasitic disease, and is commonly transmitted to humans and other mammals by an insect vector, the blood-sucking assassin bug.
The disease may also be spread through blood transfusion and organ transplant, ingestion of food contaminated by parasites, and from a mother to her foetus.
The symptoms of Chagas disease vary over the course of an infection.
In the early, acute stage, symptoms are mild and usually produce no more than local swelling at the site of infection.
As the disease progresses, over the course of many years, serious chronic symptoms can appear, such as heart disease and malformation of the intestines.
Health Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy said that, as was suspected, there is not a huge problem in Guyana as it relates to the disease, but it is also not true that it is not present here.
According to Dr. Ramsammy, since the disease is a public health problem in countries that surround Guyana, the ministry suspects that there must be circulation in the country, but expects it to be low.

In a blood screening exercise of over 300 blood units in December, only one person was found with the disease.
“That is a low incident, and we hope that it would stay that low. In fact, we hope that the incident was an imported one,” Minister Ramsammy said.
He added that since there is a possibility that Chagas is circulating in Guyana, blood needs to be screened properly.
“We don’t screen blood only because we know a blood-borne disease exists in the country; we screen blood because there is a possibility that it might be there…Remember, this is about prevention, and therefore we cannot wait to see that a blood-borne disease have been transmitted through transfusion before we decide to introduce a screening test.”
Minister Ramsammy will be holding a meeting some time this week with all private hospitals; and unless they can meet the same standards established at the NBTS, they will have to desist from collecting and screening blood at the private hospitals.

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