Health care professionals have appreciated the government decision to withdraw duty and other taxes imposed on the import and sale of platelet kit bags. Talking to APP here on Wednesday they said two different categories of the accessory marketed in the country had different cost range, coming between Rs 8000 to Rs 12,000 per bag.
"This included taxes and duties, which led to almost 30 percent increase in the retail cost," Dr Mohammad Ahsan said. It was mentioned that while a few of the blood banks managed by non government organisations were exempted of taxes hence rush witnessed before them, however, most of the private facilities could not offer any cost relief to the people in need, mainly comprising Dengue Shock Syndrome (DSS) and Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF).
Dr Sarfaraz Jafferi of Hussaini Blood Bank cited the withdrawal most timely as number of dengue patients being hospitalised was registered to be constantly increasing. "The hospitalised are generally those needing mega units of blood platelet," he commented.
Dr Syed Abdul Mujib of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC) however underscored need for easy availability of adequately developed guide lines with regard to supportive treatment of Dengue and VHF. Making observation based on his professional experience, the pathologist commented that not all patients require to be transfused mega units, which comprises 70,000 to 100,000 units.
"Availability of well chalked out guidelines for dengue fever test and intervention respectively can improve capacities of the medical professional to make adequate choice," he commented. The pathologist said manual units comprising 4000 to 5000 units are often good enough and the tendency to have multi units is misuse of the source, which is already scarce.
The pathologists in general were of the opinion that adequate facilities need to be created in rural as well as remote areas too. It was mentioned that transfusion of blood platelet were extremely essential for patients exposed to hemorrhagic conditions as this also improves auto-generation capacity of the recipients.
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