By Trudy Simpson, Staff ReporterDESPITE THE usual requests for blood and its by-products from various health facilities, the National Blood Transfusion Service (Blood Bank) has been forced to cut back on the amount of blood it processes by 50 per cent, because of the shortage of reagents used to test the precious fluid for illnesses such as Hepatitis B.
The Blood Bank has also postponed dispatching its mobile blood collection units. Reports reaching The Gleaner are that since last week, the reagents necessary to test for the presence of Hepatitis B have been unavailable. The shortage is reportedly due to the fact that the Ministry of Health owes its suppliers some $3 billion.
Yesterday, the Ministry sought to downplay reports that the cash crunch facing the Government and the Ministry is behind the dry up.
"We did make some payments," said Mrs Allen-Young yesterday.
A statement from the Ministry yesterday confirmed that: "The emergency order of reagents were shipped today. We expect them in the island by Wednesday and for clearance by Thursday at which time we expect to return to normal levels of processing."
60 UNITS PER DAY
The statement indicated that the Blood Bank was processing about 60 units per day, roughly half of the 100 to 120 units the National Blood Transfusion Service processes each day.
Although the problem is with the availability of the reagent for Hepatitis B, the Ministry hastened to add that Blood Bank officials "are testing for all the other antibodies.
In the meantime, the Blood Bank said it is still accepting walk-in donors to its centres islandwide.
"We are still having donors who are coming in but it wouldn't make sense to collect additional units from the mobile units if we are not testing anything," said acting executive director, Dr. Rochelle Roman, who referred The Gleaner to the Health Ministry.
