A Saudi doctor calls for standardization of blood testing techniques for donors Dr. Basem Al-Beirouti, Head of the Department of Hematology and Assistant Professor at the College of Medicine and Consultant of Internal Medicine, Hematology, Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation at King Abdulaziz University Hospital, from the Supreme Council of Health in Saudi Arabia to standardize blood testing techniques in all hospitals Saudi Arabia, according to the latest health methods that ensure the safety of blood transfusions from donors and provide them to needy patients.
Al-Beiruti said that, during the next two months, some health sectors will move to follow the latest methods of screening for donors using "DNA" while other health sectors remain, including King Abdulaziz University Hospital, which receives more than 8 thousand donors per year, as well as many sectors Governmental and private health institutions are still examining the blood of donors using "antibody" technology, which will distinguish a kind of differentiation among citizens regarding the issue of safety from one place to another, he said.
Dr. Al-Beiruti stated that the use of modern technology, which is currently in force in most countries of the developed world, helped to avoid many of the consequences that occur from the previous method, which many health sectors in Saudi Arabia still follow. This will make the process of controlling the currently spreading diseases a very difficult issue, especially since "hepatitis C" is one of the most common diseases transmitted through blood transfusion. As the probability of infection due to a blood transfusion (1 in every 60,000 units of blood) compared to the Acquired Immunodeficiency Virus (AIDS), one case per million blood units, is the ratio that Dr. Al-Beiruti described as high.
Dr. Al-Bayrouti considered that the current situation lies in the standardization of blood transfusion technology, as the DNA examination of the virus reveals the donor''s pathological condition, while the current antibody test in force does not give a clear result except in a period extending from 6 weeks to 6 months sometimes, due to the long incubation period For hepatitis C virus (c).
Al-Beiruti called for considering the situation of certain types of patients who need to transfuse large amounts of blood throughout their lives, and many of them have become infected with the hepatitis C virus (C) as a result of repeated blood transfusions for them, which is a large group that includes those with hereditary blood diseases (anemia). Mediterranean known as thalassemia, sickle cell anemia) and other conditions that require blood transfusion in different circumstances.
Al-Beiruti said that the high cost of DNA testing for the virus will in the future be consistent with reducing the budgets of the health sector in treating many diseases that result from the insecurity of fully transfused blood, which he sees as meeting the demands of the World Health Organization that called for generalizing the trend towards nuclear testing for viruses. .
The World Health Organization has warned that more than 120 countries do not have a safe system to maintain the safety of blood supply sources, and the World Health Organization has called on all its members to develop health strategies and high technologies to ensure the safety of blood transfusion and avoid any infection transmitted to any patient.
King Abdulaziz University recently held the first international conference of transfusion medicine, in which a group of doctors and specialists in transfusion medicine in the world participated, and they came up with many recommendations, the most important of which is the generalization of conducting DNA testing for viruses.
