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Zvamaida Murwira Senior Reporter
Members of Parliament have urged the Government to subsidise the cost of blood transfusion saying the current price was beyond the reach of many.
Legislators noted that despite the fact that people donated blood, recipients were still subjected to high costs.
The legislators made the plea while contributing to a motion moved by Chegutu West MP Cde Dexter Nduna (Zanu-PF) last week.
Blood costs about $140 a unit, the cost being the recovery fee for secure testing, processing and storage. He said despite emergency treatment being a fundamental human right, health institutions were refusing to give needy patients blood without prior payment.
“How many people that need blood can afford $140 per pint? None! In particular, during the economic hardships that we are currently going through as a nation,” he said.
Cde Nduna said as chairperson of Transport and Infrastructure they had observed that several lives were lost in road accidents and one reason was that people would have failed to access blood.
“On the issue of road carnage, we are losing about five lives per day through road carnage. The issue of death involves those people that would have not afforded to get blood transfusion because they are expected to pay before they get blood transfusion; because the health institutions are not directed to give blood for free,” he said.
Warren Park MP Elias Mudzuri (MDC-T) said that while private hospitals could be allowed cost reflective prices for blood, the same could not be applied on public health institutions.
He said Government should come up with various measures to ensure that blood was affordable, including imposing a levy on fuel.
Chinhoyi MP Dr Peter Mataruse (MDC-T) said it required highly technical and specialised people to screen blood of diseases like HIV/AIDS, syphilis, hepatitis and Zika virus.
“We need specialist pathologists in Zimbabwe. We have only one and that person cannot cover the whole country. Therefore, the issue of decentralising blood banks is almost impossible,” said Dr Mataruse.
“We also need highly specialised technologists. They used to be called third party technicians, which means we start with the lowest grade certificates, part two and then part three.
“They are highly skilled technologists and they are now given degrees and are called laboratory scientists. We really need highly specialised people to screen this disease.
“HIV/AIDS has a lower rate of deaths than hepatitis. I will assure you that if we screen the people in this House, we might find out that 40 percent have hepatitis because during the Smith regime, we used to have a herf-gun which was used from one person to the next without being changed or cleaned and if one was infected, it would be transmitted to the next person.”
He said that, despite it being donated, blood required some money to screen and preserve it.
Online Reporter