A mobile court conducted a drive at Rogi Kolyan Blood Bank in the capital yesterday and closed it on the grounds of hazard posed to patients, sentencing six persons to prison.
The court, led by Executive Magistrate AHM Anwar Pasha, raided the blood bank, located on the first floor of a building at Amtoli in Mohakhali area, and found its employees giving blood transfusions to patients without running the appropriate tests.
With the support of Rapid Action Battalion 1 personnel, the court seized 32 bags of poisonous blood and sealed off the blood bank.
The four owners of the blood bank, Robiul Islam, 40, his younger brother Ripon Uddin, 35, and their partners Saidul Islam 35, and Abdul Aziz, and one of employees, Anwar Hossain Kalu, 42, were sentenced to jail for two years, while Iqbal Kabir, another employee, was sentenced to jail for a year.
Dr Jogesh Chandra Roy of the Directorate General of Health Services and Assistant Superintendent of Police Jahangir Alam were also present during the raid.
During the drive the court found a cancer patient named Md Tajul Islam, 65, receiving transfusion of untested blood. In another room, Kalu was found collecting blood from Mahbubur Rahman, 25, a drug addict.
Another employee, Saiful Islam, was found selling blood to a patient’s relative for Tk1,500. The test report that the buyer was given with the blood was found to be signed by Iqbal instead of a doctor.
Iqbal admitted that he had been forging blood reports without any tests following the directives given by the owners of the blood bank, said Anwar Pasha.
Abdul Aziz admitted to changing the labels on the bags of expired blood.
“Employees at the blood bank prepare two bags of blood by mixing saline water with a single bag of blood,” the magistrate said.
While talking to the Dhaka Tribune, he said the blood bank’s employees were not educated enough and had been running its operations in an unhygienic environment, despite having doctors and nurses, without testing the blood.
Five tests – HIV, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Syphilis and Malaria – are mandatory before giving or selling a bag of blood to a patient.
The staff have been collecting blood from frequent donors, some of whom were found to be addicts, at the rate of Tk250-300, and they have been selling the blood at Tk1,500-3,000, the magistrate said.
The mobile courts, along with the Rab, have raided and sealed off 28 such blood banks so far and sentenced 54 to prison for various terms as well as charged them with large fines, sources said.
There are a total of 77 licensed blood banks, according to sources, who said a large number of these blood banks run business in various illicit ways.
Anwar Pasha, the executive magistrate of the mobile court, also said the huge demand for blood is largely met with the blood supplied by professional donors in association with a section of corrupt and ruthless people involved in the blood bank business.