Carisa Lee

Carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Re­porter 

On the 20th an­niver­sary of World Blood Donor Day, the pop­u­la­tion is be­ing urged to give blood vol­un­tar­i­ly in­stead of us­ing the chit sys­tem.

This year’s theme is “20 years of cel­e­brat­ing giv­ing: thank you, blood donors.”

Ac­cord­ing to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, the vol­un­tary sys­tem will help more peo­ple as op­posed to the chit sys­tem which he de­scribed as in­equitable.

“You give blood but you de­ter­mine who gets blood, what about the oth­er peo­ple who need blood, the ac­ci­dent vic­tim, the gun­shot vic­tim, the moth­er un­der­go­ing a Cae­sare­an op­er­a­tion, the lit­tle girl with tha­lassemia sick­le-cell dis­ease, how do they get blood and they need blood reg­u­lar­ly,” he said.

Mo­ments af­ter giv­ing blood dur­ing a dri­ve at the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Deyals­ingh said Trinidad and To­ba­go was one of the on­ly coun­tries that still had the chit sys­tem which he be­lieves al­so pos­es a dan­ger to pa­tients.

“Very of­ten peo­ple in their des­per­a­tion to find blood go and pay drug ad­dicts who may have HIV, syphilis so it con­t­a­m­i­nates your blood sup­ply,” he ex­plained.

The min­is­ter added that many peo­ple do not un­der­stand what hap­pens be­hind the scenes when they come to the hos­pi­tal with an emer­gency that re­quires blood to save their lives.

He said these blood dri­ves help them build stock as they get ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 to 20 pints of blood each time. It al­so rais­es aware­ness and builds the min­istry’s data­base on who can give blood.

“Up to four times a healthy male and twice a year for a healthy fe­male,” he said.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the T&T Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion Dr San­di Arthur said one unit of blood can save up to three lives.

She said her best friend who had bone mar­row is­sues re­quired blood and if peo­ple had not do­nat­ed vol­un­tar­i­ly then she would have died.

The min­is­ter said since its in­cep­tion years ago there has been an in­crease in blood do­na­tions from 0.5 per cent to 10.5 per cent.

How­ev­er, Deyals­ingh de­scribed the im­pact of deal­ing with non­com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) as phe­nom­e­nal in se­lect­ed tar­get groups.

“We start­ed di­a­betes in preg­nan­cy pro­gramme about two years ago, all preg­nant women now are be­ing screened for di­a­betes and we are start­ing to see more preg­nant women who are con­trolled,” the min­is­ter said.

Deyals­ingh added that 37 per cent of the 67,000 peo­ple en­rolled in the Hearts for Hy­per­ten­sives pro­gramme saw their dis­ease brought un­der con­trol by Ju­ly last year. He said by De­cem­ber it was 68 per cent.

“Be­tween di­a­betes and hy­per­ten­sion which are the two big NCDs we are see­ing great progress,” Deyals­ingh said.