As fears abound that improper blood transfusion for thalassemia patients at the Junagadh Civil Hospital could have infected 23 children with HIV,activists say that their worse fears seem to have come true. They say that the proposal to start the Nucleic Acid Test Centres (NATC) which can identify HIV virus among thalassemia patients from day one in different clusters of the state has been given cold shoulder by the state Health Department. The recurring cost of maintenance of the NATC is considered a major hurdle. In March last year,the Indian Red Cross Society (IRCS),along with different organisations representing parents of thalassemic children,had approached the health department requesting it to start the Centre so that the patients from the remote areas can get tested blood for transfusion. They said the demand was not considered and senior government officials told the representatives that while the government can take up the responsibility of setting up NATC,the maintenance would remain a problem. The demand still stands because NATCs would prove to be a life saving measure for the patients who are already battling diseases like thalassemia, said Prakash Parmar,project coordinator of Sickle Cell Anaemia and Thalassemia,IRCS,Ahmedabad. Currently,patients from urban areas have the facility of checking the blood before the transfusion. But the situation is not encouraging in remote and semi-urban areas where prevalence of AIDS and HIV is known only after it aggravates, he added. Parmar said they wanted to set up at least nine centres for the clusters. The cluster headquarters would have had the facility of having the centers for the patients who in other case would have to go to a city, he said. Moreover,the department has not been able to make a network of thalassemia patients the way it is in the case of HIV positive people. There is no one umbrella under which all the thalassemia patients are covered. There are organisations but they are not connected. I wish the government takes an initiative so that 7000-odd thalassemia patients benefit from it, said Dr Anil Khatri from Ahmedabad-based Thalassemia Jagruti Organisation.
