Chinese blood banks and manufacturers of blood products are
being urged in an ongoing national campaign to buy only lab-tested
plasma to prevent the further spread of viruses, including HIV.
Since early July, health, medical supervision and public
security departments and the prosecutors' office under the State
Council have been investigating 36 blood-related businesses to see
whether they sacrifice health standards for volume. The businesses
are being asked to report their production volume, plasma sources
and quantity, and quarantine and sterility conditions precisely and
truthfully, officials said.
As the buyers of blood, the practices of such businesses are
vital in preventing blood collection stations from violating
operating regulations during plasma collection, said Ministry of
Health spokesman Mao Quan'an.
The investigations are part of the campaign that started in late
May to fight unsafe blood collection and supply, a primary cause of
the rapid spread of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and
hepatitis.
To increase their profits from plasma centers and blood banks,
many collection stations in China simply collect as much plasma as
possible without regard to quality and quarantine standards or
sterile practices.
The result was disastrous in the early 1990s in some rural and
remote areas, where large numbers of farmers were infected with HIV
while selling their blood at unlicensed stations.
A majority of the people who were infected in the early 1990s
now have AIDS.
In response to the spread of HIV among thousands of farmers in
the late 1990s, central China's Henan
Province has closed all blood stations, both illegal and legal,
Mao said. But he said they would continue working to find and close
those that are operating secretly.
Meanwhile, attracted by high profits, some official blood
centers and hospitals have also been collecting blood improperly,
he said. For example, they collect blood too frequently from people
who sell their blood to earn a living. Laboratory testing, if
conducted at all, is often poorly done.
Some blood banks have bought blood without regard to standards,
Mao said.
Efforts to strengthen blood management in recent years have led
to the closing of most illegal blood stations and the blood supply
is now much safer, Mao said.
The State Council seeks to close all illegal blood stations and
make all blood centers and hospitals strictly follow blood
transmission guidelines by the end of the year.
In a country with 840,000 HIV/AIDS sufferers, unsafe blood
collection and transmission is one of the key reasons for the
spread of HIV.
One of the primary causes of the chaotic blood market is the
lack of voluntary unpaid donors, Mao said. Evidence from around the
world demonstrates that voluntary unpaid blood donors are the
foundation of a safe blood supply: they are associated with
significantly lower levels of infections that can be transmitted by
transfusion, including HIV and hepatitis.
An estimated 20 to 30 percent of blood in China comes from
voluntary unpaid donors.
(China Daily July 30, 2004)