It is most unsettling to find out from disclosures in the blood safety plan that the pre-transfusion testing systems in all the hospital transfusion services around the country are incomplete and inadequate. It is chilling to learn that, under the present system, patients in medical institutions nationwide are getting blood transfusions that no one has tested for transmissible diseases.

Guyana's health sector is far from ideal, but it has made commendable strides in recent times. One of the most noticeable signs of progress has been the expansion and modernisation of testing services for diseases, especially communicable diseases. Quick, reliable testing is available at public and private laboratories in the health sector. In that scenario, it is surprising that NBTS has to use untested blood.

The NBTS has a critical role to play in the health sector and the extent and integrity of its reserves of blood are quite literally a matter of life and death. The necessity of pre-testing blood used for transfusions was highlighted worldwide in the 1980s when tennis star Arthur Ashe got HIV from tainted blood transfusions and later died from AIDS.

Health officials know very well that contaminated blood transfusions expose recipients to a staggering amount of deadly diseases. Therefore, the fact that NBTS sometimes doles out untested blood can only mean one thing. In medical emergencies when patients cannot survive without immediate blood transfusions, untested blood is sometimes all that is available.

According to the blood safety plan, this dangerous situation arises from deficiencies throughout the nation's blood transfusion system. There are organisational problems, staffing problems, problems with equipment, storage and transportation, problems with record keeping as well as problems getting enough donors. These cause serious deficiencies in the sufficiency, safety and timely distribution of blood for transfusions.

One of the most worrying of these deficiencies is the shortage of trained personnel, overworked staff and constant migration of skills. This compounds problems with the storage of blood from the time of donation to when it is transfused to patients. In particular, there are deeply worrying questions about the safety of blood during transportation and when it is stored in hospital wards. In addition, it appears that there are problems with monitoring the temperature of blood during infusion to patients.

The chronic inability of the NBTS to attract enough blood donors to meet the needs of the health sector definitely compounds the situation. This means that the system relies too heavily on emergency blood donations by patients' relatives and friends. In medical emergencies, it is the blood patients get from last minute donations by friends and family that is most likely to be untested.

In light of the serious weaknesses of the NBTS, it may be useful for the system to concentrate more on getting persons to extract, test and store supplies of their own blood for possible medical emergences. Self-interest is a powerful motivator and it might be easier to get persons to donate blood as a personal contingency plan than it is to get them to donate blood to strangers. It would be in their interest to ensure that such supplies are properly stored and tested.