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By Sharmain CornetteNational standards outlining the circumstances under which blood transfusion should be undertaken at private hospitals is likely to be in place by June of this year.Minister of Health Dr Leslie Ramsammy made this disclosure recently, even as he disclosed that as part of the inspection for their operating licenses these hospitals will also be required to establish a blood transfusion committee that is headed by a doctor.According to the Minister, it has been recognised that there is an urgent need to establish protocols within the private hospitals for the use of blood.“It could vary a little bit because we are now putting together the national standards, but by June this year we are going to issue national standards,” Minister Ramsammy asserted.The standards, he said, will serve to inform of the conditions under which blood should be acquired. At the moment, the Minister disclosed, every private doctor and hospital have different standards but cautioned that they must within a certain range. And though many private hospitals claim to not have the time to promote blood drives, Minister Ramsammy noted that they are also guilty of using blood transfusions as a business centre.“We believe that when it comes to blood transfusion it should be unequivocally a health and safety issue.” For this reason, the Minister said that “while we want to give the private hospitals all the blood they need we will not permit them to charge exorbitant sums of money for it.”The Ministry of Health, according to Dr Ramsammy, will in essence regulate what private hospitals charge for furnishing their clients with blood. Many clients of private hospitals have in the past paid in excess of $12,000 per unit of blood, the Minister divulged.Although they are expected to recover cost, the Minister said that private hospitals should not abuse the situation as they are only required to pay a mere $3,500 to acquire the product from the National Blood Transfusion Service.“The cost for the National Government to screen a unit of blood is $3,500 per unit and that does not include the bags, testing for HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis B and C, syphilis, HTLV, Chagas and malaria.”The cost does not include staffing it does not include storage. What we charge them is minimal, therefore I don’t see the need for them to charge much more. They can’t charge $8,000 and $12,000.”He added that the public health sector will allow a reasonable cost to cover the additional expense such as blood grouping processes and for staffing that may be incurred by the private hospitals.Meanwhile, the Minister noted that some private hospitals have given the impression that they have been stopped from collecting blood. He was pellucid that the Ministry of Health is ready and willing to grant private hospitals the permission to collect their own blood once they show that they have the relevant facilities and equipment to do so.“They must demonstrate to us that they have the facility to store blood, secondly that they have trained staff and more importantly that they can do all the tests that represent the menu of screening tests that we require.”As it is, Dr. Ramsammy disclosed, no private hospital has the capacity to conduct tests such as HTLV and chagas. The only facilities currently capable of carrying out these tests are the National Blood Transfusion Service and the National Public Health Reference Laboratory.