Four blood transfusion centres to be ready soon

By AK Lodhi

Karachi: Four Regional Blood Transfusion Centres (RBTCs) being constructed in different cities of Sindh will be made operational within a couple of months.

These blood transfusion centres being built at Karachi, Jamshoro, Nawabshah and Sukkur would mobilize voluntary blood donors, carry out blood’s processing, screening, testing, besides having storage facility.
An official of Sindh health department said that the plan to establish four regional blood transfusion centres was conceived around four years ago with the financial assistance of Germany-GIZ and KFW (German development bank) at an estimated cost of Rs 577.500 million. 
He said that the buildings of RBTCs upon their completion would be hand over to the provincial health department within a month and shortly afterwards, the process of recruiting staff for these centres would begin.
He said that these four RBTCs would cover the entire province and each of them would be linked with six hospital-based blood banks (HBBBs). 

In Karachi, the RBTC is being established at Qatar Hospital in Orangi Town. It will have the capacity of 50,000 blood bags, while the capacity of each of other three RBTCs would be 20,000 blood bags.