Vendors outside hospitals double up as touts for blood donors
Pulkit Vasudha
Ahmedabad, June 15: Posing as a relative of a patient urgently in need of blood, all that Ashwini Varma, a medical technician, had to do was approach the nearest tea stall vendor outside the civil hospital. The deal was struck with Kallubhai, the tea stall owner, for Rs 500 per unit of blood. He would arrange for a professional donor in a few minutes.
“The money and the doctor’s prescription would have to be deposited at the tea-stall before the donors are taken inside the hospital for blood donation. Our donors are perfectly trained to answer the doctor’s queries. There will be no problem. They won’t know that he is a professional donor,” said Kallubhai. The blood crisis in the city has resulted in the mushrooming of blood donations of a different kind: donors who are willing to put the lives of patients as well as their own at risk for a few hundred rupees a month. With nurses and ward boys of the civil hospital, who get a cut of Rs 10 or Rs 20 for sending every person to the tout, it’s a flourishing business.
This business thrives outside the Civil Hospital and the MP Shah Cancer Hospital where a large number of patients require blood daily. Relatives of patients are desperate to find blood replacement donors so that the sick can receive treatment at the earliest. With a large number of patients at the Civil Hospital coming from far away Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and also from all over Gujarat, many of them do not know anyone who can give replacement blood donation. For them, the professional donors come as saviours.
Outside gate no. 2 of Civil Hospital is a row of owners of tea, paan and refreshment cart owners who double up as touts. The ring leader is Pandit, the priest of the Khodiyar Temple outside the Civil Hospital. “If you need blood, I will get it for you. Do not worry. This is my business,” boasts Pandit.
“The professional blood donors who come here usually belong to the Chamanpura slums. Unemployed and poor, they are easy targets for touts who send them with patients for replacement of blood,” said Dr Jimit Mehta at the bloodbank of MP Shah Cancer Hospital.
“The lifestyle of these donors makes them susceptible to diseases like hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV, malaria or syphilis. If the donor is in the window period, the disease cannot be detected through blood tests. Patients to whom the blood is given are at a high risk of contriving any of these diseases,” said Dr Hardik Chauhan.
Doctors usually check if the donor is a professional and has recently donated blood. The haemoglobin levels of a person who has donated blood within three months would be lower than normal.
But the touts are smarter. “Touts give iron tablets to the frequent donors so that their haemoglobin levels do not drop,” said a doctor who has caught professional donors in the past. “The donors jeopardise their health by donating blood frequently and surviving on supplements to make up their blood loss,” he added.
“Every week, we receive at least 15 professional donors and have to discard at least 5 units of blood that we receive through replacements. Most of the time, we do not have the time to cross-examine the donors to see if they are genuine or professionals. When we suspect something, we do not take blood from the donor,” said Dr Jayshree Shukla, the blood bank incharge at MP Shah Cancer Hospital.
Despite requests by doctors, the department has not taken any action against professional donors. According to a NACO study, 2.6 per cent AIDS cases in India are spread through contaminated blood transfusion.
“Professional donors donate at intervals as short as one or two weeks. Recently, a man who came to donate blood was found to have donated it only two weeks earlier,” said Dr Siddhartha Trivedi, of the Ahmedabad Red Cross Society. “Human blood requires at least three months to replenish completely after each donation. The vein through which blood was taken also needs three months to heal itself.” Of the Rs 500 given to the tout, only Rs 100 to Rs 150 is given to the donor, said Rajubhai, a wardboy of civil hospital.
Source: Indian Express