The sub-committee constituted by the National Blood Transfusion Council (NBTC), the apex body in matters pertaining to operation of blood centers to draw an action plan to implement the National Blood Policy, has placed its recommendations before the council recently. The draft recommendations are being fine tuned and would be announced within a months time, it is learnt.

Informing this to Pharmabiz.com, Meenakshi Dutta Ghosh, project director NACO said that the action plan would consider the ground realities and would be accommodate the best options available.

The sub-committee was constituted with NBTC members two months ago. The governing body of the council had decided to give special emphasis on the decentralization of the functioning of state of the art blood storage centres and district level blood banks.

In order to reduce the delays in the registration of new blood banks, the committee had also decided to look into the procedure relating to licensing of blood banks and recommend necessary changes. NACO is expected to initiate appropriate measures to enhance the access of safe supply of blood at the district level across the country.

It may be recalled that the National Blood Policy states that NBTC shall be the policy formulating apex body in relation to all matters pertaining to operation of blood centres. NACO shall allocate the budget to NBTC for strengthening Blood Transfusion Service.

As per the Blood Policy, the State / UT Blood Transfusion Councils are responsible for implementation of the Blood Programme at State/UT level, as per the recommendations of the National Blood Transfusion Council. It has asked for the development of mechanisms for better co-ordination between NBTC and SBTCs.

Under the broad guidelines of the NBTC, State/UT Blood Transfusion Councils are to develop their own action plan to ensure phasing out of replacement donors. NBTC is authorized to ensure involvement of other Ministries and other health programmes for various activities related to blood transfusion services.

According to the policy, the SBTCs shall organise the blood transfusion service through the network of Regional Blood Centres and Satellite Centres and other governments, Indian Red Cross Society and NGO run blood centres and monitor their functioning. All Regional Centres shall be assigned an area around in which the other blood banks and hospitals which are linked to the Regional Centre will be assisted for any requirement and shall be audited by the Regional Centre. It is to help SBTC in collecting the data from this region.

The Regional Centres shall be autonomous for their day to day functioning and shall be guided by recommendations of the State/UT Blood Transfusion Councils. The Regional Centre shall act as a referral centre for the region assigned to it. NBTC is also to develop the guidelines to define NGO run blood centres so as to avoid profiteering in blood banking.

The policy calls for the formation of an External Quality Assessment Scheme (EQAS) through the referral laboratories approved by the NBTC to assist participating centres in achieving higher standards and uniformity

NBTC is also to identify a centre of national repute for quality control of indigenous as well as imported consumables, reagents and plasma products.