Saturday, April 9 2011

WE are calling for a clear statement from the Ministry of Health about how they intend to redress the recent shortfall in blood donations seemingly caused by the elimination of the “chit system”.

As we understand it, the elimination of the use of chits in January has been accompanied by the severing of the nexus between blood donor and his/her intended recipient. Simply put, if you make the effort to donate a pint of blood to a known relative, friend, neighbour or workmate in need, there is now absolutely no guarantee that he or she would actually get any blood which may in fact be diverted to more “urgent” patients.

We cannot fathom the logic in breaking this link between a donor and the intended recipient. Human nature is not infinitely altruistic, so no one is going to repeatedly donate blood in the name of a loved one only for it to be repeatedly diverted to unknown persons.
So said, so done. A story in Newsday on March 26 entitled, “$$ for blood?”, reported that since this major change in the system of donations, there has been a drastic fall in blood donations.

The story said this fact was alluded to by the Health Minister, Therese Baptiste-Cornelis, herself, speaking at the National Blood Transfusion Service, Charlotte Street, Port-of-Spain.
“There have been reports of shortages of blood and surgeries being cancelled,” said the Minister. “There is less blood than there used to be and that is what some persons call a shortage because the system is not getting persons coming in as they used to.”

The point was also made in the story by a lab technician, saying, “We have lost over 500 units of blood per month as a result of the ‘no-chit system’ so we need to build up the reserves”.
We are shocked by this state of affairs.
The Minister, at the post-Cabinet media conference, spoke about the woes of the old and new systems of blood donation, but in our view did not focus on the central question of the broken nexus between donor and recipient.
She hoped to appeal to more people to become donors, to extend the Blood Bank’s opening hours (including Saturdays), and to find new facilities to host donors.
The Minister hit the now-abolished chit system as corrupt, saying it was plagued by bogus chits and by persons buying and selling blood at $2,000 a pint.
We say all that is beyond the point.

We are sure an efficient system can be found for keeping track of specific blood donations, whether by way of the “letter” mentioned by the Minister, or through computerisation, or by inter-departmental telephone calls.

Our bottom line is that even if the chit system was being abused and needed to be replaced, that is certainly no reason to destroy the donor-recipient nexus and thereby cause the current plunge in donations.

Baptiste-Cornelis partially assured the post-Cabinet news briefing that someone should be entitled to donate blood for a specific recipient.

“We have discovered — and asked for a comprehensive report — that the implementation of this no-chit system was not properly implemented,” she admitted.
“Yes they did take away the chit system and sometimes when people went to give blood for a specific case, they were told ‘what’s the point of giving it because you are not going to get the blood for the person?’” This is a frank admission.
However, her message was otherwise fuzzy, was lost in tangential issues, and was only revealed after she was pressed by reporters.

She said that in her view a donor should be allowed to donate to a particular beneficiary, saying that is you donate specifically to a relative going into surgery, then that should not be a problem.

We welcome these views, and her remarks that she is talking to doctors and RHA boards, and that the Ministry is looking at the use of a letter rather than a chit, so as to better track blood donations.

However it our view that there is a need for a even clearer, unambiguous statement from the Minister, in collaboration with the Blood Bank and the RHAs, to assure donors that their sacrifice of blood would be for their intended beneficiaries.