THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the Regional Cancer Centre (RCC) Thiruvananthapuram in a spot of botheration over the alleged unsafe blood transfusion incidents, Health Minister K K Shylaja on Thursday threw her weight behind the centre. Talking to press persons, she alleged an orchestrated campaign was going against the centre and added a nexus is in operation to malign the RCC and destroy the institution.
“I had strong reasons to believe a nexus is in operation against the RCC so as to help the private sector. By pinpointing some rarest of the rare cases some are engaged in destroying the organisation,” said Shylaja.
While saying the campaign against RCC might be deliberate, the minister further added such reports can only help to trigger panic among people who rely on the centre for treatment at affordable costs.
“Even at the global stage, there is no mechanism to detect window period infections. The most-advanced mechanism that is currently available is the Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (NAT). Ironically, NAT could reduce the window period from the current three months to 15 days,” she said.
It was the other day that RCC director Paul Sebastian in a statement alleged a witch-hunting is going against the centre and it is impossible to determine the infection if the donor is in his/her window period. According to him, RCC is following all those procedures being laid out by WHO and NACO regarding blood screening and the centre is in the process to introduce the NAT facility for blood testing. At the same time, the RCC director had stated there might be some ‘minor incautiousness’ from its part as it has to handle a large volume of patients on a daily basis.