Inter Press Service - September 10, 2001
Ranjit Devraj

The NHRC, a statutory body, was acting on a complaint made by the country's top prison official Ajay Agarwal that the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS), which runs the country's biggest blood-banking facility, refused to accept blood from jail inmates to be donated to victims of the devastating Jan 26 earthquake in western Gujarat state.

Agarwal, who is Director General of Prisons, in his formal complaint accused the IRCS of not only being "highly discriminatory" towards prisoners but also "derogatory and in violation of the human rights of prisoners".

But the NHRC last week upheld the IRCS decision not to accept blood from prisoners as "rational and a matter of policy" and also one which kept in mind "the health and rights of recipients".

Rights groups reacted to the NHRC order by saying that the whole affair smacked of the kind of attitudes and prejudices that have resulted in a chronic and acute shortage of blood needed for infusion by the country's hospitals.

"The NHRC should have constituted a scientific panel to go into the issue and publicised the results before pronouncing on the issue," said Ramesh Sharma of the influential Gandhi Peace Foundation.

Said Purshottaman Mulloli, chief of the Joint Action Council (JAC), a leading rights group: "The NHRC, which should be upholding human rights, has instead passed an order which clearly discriminatory and has no basis in science."

In a report on blood services in South Asia released in June 1999, the International Federation of the Red Cross noted that cultural issues played a major role in chronic shortages of blood supply in the region.

Under existing rules, prisoners are entitled to donate blood twice a year and thus earn a month's remission for that year. Agrawal pointed out that the rejection of their blood donations, also amounted to the denial of a chance to get their jail term reduced.

According to Iqbal Malik, who heads the non-governmental organisation 'Vatavaran', Delhi alone needs some 300,000 units of blood annually. Less than half of this is actually collected by blood banks with the rest coming from professional donors.

Studies by her group have found that a three-year-old order by India's Supreme Court banning patients from buying blood from professional donors has only added to shortages and raised the cost of blood in a flourishing underground market.

Like the NHRC, the apex court ruled -- on the basis of a study by a firm of chartered accountants -- that professional blood donors were likely to come from the "dregs of society" and therefore likely to have contaminated blood.

The study conducted by A.F. Ferguson said that professional donors were mostly poor people, many of whom were likely to be drug abusers and engaging in unsafe sex.

They were therefore "high risk groups for hepatitis and AIDS (Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome) and are unfit to donate blood," the study noted. According to V.B. Lal, a surgeon who runs the capital city's largest private blood bank, poor and unemployed blood donors do not necessarily indulge in "high-risk behaviour".

"What is required to be known is that donated blood is scientifically safe and tested rather than its antecedents," said Lal adding that the country could not afford to be choosy when genuine voluntary donations were missing. According to Lal, blood banking in the country was affected by the widespread belief that donating blood would somehow weaken the donor.

Lal has blamed the government for not carrying out a proper public awareness campaign to educate potential donors and create a reliable cadre of donors that could be depended on to keep up supplies.

But prejudices remain in spite of the acute shortages and well- to-do or influential patients insist that they be infused directly with blood from their own relatives.

A leading voluntary group, Common Cause, has even petitioned the Delhi High Court for orders that allow patients to take blood from relatives and friends rather than depend on shelved blood in blood banks from unknown origins.

In the 1999 report on South Asia, the International Federation of the Red Cross noted that "financial problems, individuals as well as countries in the region are facing, frustrate the principle of of voluntary non-remunerated blood donation."

The report noted that recruitment and retention of voluntary blood donors for adequate and safe blood supply presented a tremendous task which called for a massive communication campaign aimed at involving all sections of society in building a reliable blood transfusion system.

India's requirement of blood is estimated at 7.5 million units per annum while current availability is around four million units.

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