VIDEO: SANBS supplies SA with safer blood
CONSTANTIA KLOOF – Technology advancement enables SANBS to provide safer blood for transfusions.
The South African National Blood Service boasted its latest technology called nucleic acid testing that enables it to deliver safer blood to South Africans on 6 August.
Chief operations officer of SANBS Ravi Reddy said they collect about 3 000 units of blood everyday and it takes them 24 hours to analyse and test the blood they receive.
He pointed out that even though South Africa had a high prevalence of HIV and hepatitis B and C, with the implementation of new technologies these were now quickly picked up through their testing methods.
“We are now able to detect these illnesses within a period of five days of being infected, ensuring much safer blood that is needed for transfusions on a daily basis,” Reddy said.
He added that donors who were on hypertension and sugar diabetes medication were welcomed to donate as long as their condition was stable.
He pointed out that a new donor questionnaire was rolled out last year to ensure a more effective way to screen potential donors and illuminate potential danger as well as to assess a donor’s risky behaviour early.
“In the last year through our nucleic acid test, we picked up around 1 500 HIV positive donations which were eliminated and thus ensuring a much safer blood supply,” he added.
He admitted that the nucleic acid test did not completely remove the risk of potentially infecting a transfusion recipient with a disease such as HIV, but that the risk was significantly reduced over the last 10 years.
He added that donors who had blood type O – Positive and especially those with blood type O – Negative were very important as they were able to give almost anyone this type of blood which is essential as this blood could be given to patients when there was not enough time to do a blood match test.
Reddy added that each unit of blood (500ml) went through rigorous testing before being sent to the 437 hospitals that they supply blood to. He added that there was no race barrier and that all batches of blood were identified by their batch number which they used to trace infected donors and not by race.
