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Blood and HIV/AIDS

18 January 2004, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Dr. Mustafa Abdur Rahim, Director, Samajik Shasthya Kendra, Mirpur, Dhaka-1216
18 January 2004, 18:00 PM
Churchill said "Blood is thicker than water." There are many sayings about blood-- reddish face, bloody congratulations etc. To a cross section of people, blood donation is the most valuable thing. I remember one incident-- the mother was morbid, the doctor advised her son to give blood . The boy was flabbergasted with raising eyebrows, "My blood?" Actually blood is no doubt valuable, but the blood corpuscles never remain alike for more than four months. Old blood corpuscles get damaged, new ones are synthesised in liver, spleen and red bone-marrow. So, every young healthy person should give blood every four months. The age bracket is 17-57 years.

We know HIV/AIDS is a new global menace . HIV virus spread 90% - 100% through blood transfusion and 0.1 % -10% through sex. It is expected that virus-less blood is safe blood. By screening in the proper way we determine whether the blood is safe. Usually blood transfusion centres screen five diseases --- syphilis, hepatitis B,C, HIV/AIDS and malaria.

In Bangladesh, we need 2.5 lakh units of blood every year. About 1.55 lakh units of blood are collected through government and non-government agencies. Voluntary blood donors or professional blood sellers are another source of this life-saving fluid. Naturally, we may have doubts about proper screening of about one lakh units of blood. If we do not increase the number of voluntary blood donors, the HIV/AIDS epidemic will be very difficult to contain. So it is the time to create awareness about the issue. Otherwise, we may face a very difficult situation.

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