SBTA sealed 24 blood banks in 2015

By Our Staff Reporter

Karachi: As many as 24 blood banks – four registered and 20 unregistered - were sealed and their equipments seized across the Sindh province during 2015 for violating laws of supplying safe and screened blood.

Sindh Blood Transfusion Authority’s (SBTA) secretary Dr Zahid Hasan Ansari said that all the 24 blood banks sealed in 2015 by the Authority’s monitoring teams were operating in Karachi, Jamshoro, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana, Qambar Shahdadkot, Jacobabad, Badin, Thatta and some other districts of the province.

Asked how many blood banks are registered in Sindh, he said that of the total 152 blood banks registered in the province, 83 are operating in Karachi, while remaining registered blood banks exist in other parts of the province.

Dr Ansari said no new blood bank had been opened in Sindh in 2015 as the SBTA, in the light of World Health Organization’s directives, had introduced strict policy for opening new blood banks.

He said that crackdown against all illegal blood banks and labs would continue.