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Health Ministry to scrutinise private hospital’s blood screening capability – Minister Ramsammy

Feb 24, 2009 News

In its quest to ensure that only hospitals with the capacity to properly screen blood are allowed to receive blood donations, the Ministry of Health will this week be inspecting all private hospitals.
According to Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy, several inspectors will be dispatched to the health facilities in order to determine whether they can test for a number of blood-related diseases, including Chagas.

Chagas is a tropical parasitic disease which is commonly transmitted to humans and other mammals by an insect vector. The disease may also be spread through blood transfusion and organ transplantation, ingestion of food contaminated with parasites, and from a mother to her foetus.

The symptoms of the 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. If untreated, the chronic disease is often fatal.
In addition to Chagas, the inspectors will be tasked with determining the hospitals’ ability to test for HTLV, which causes leukemia and Hepatitis C.

And should the health facilities not be able to carry out such tests, Minister Ramsammy noted that they will be forbidden from carrying out any test or blood screening. They will not be able to receive donated blood for the purpose of transmission.
The Minister added that the onus is still on individuals to determine whether they will give blood to private hospitals without first knowing that their blood will be properly tested.

“They might be giving blood to save the life of a family member, but at the same time they might be giving them a disease that the patient does not have, like Hepatitis C, HTLV or Chagas,” the Minister opined.
In the past, screening for Chagas was not mandatory locally, according to the Minister, even as he disclosed that since the test has been introduced about five persons have been diagnosed with the disease.
The Minister said that his Ministry is earnestly working towards alerting doctors of private institutions of the importance of screening blood to detect certain diseases.

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