IE : Course to meet shortage of transfusion technicians : July 27, 2007
Course to meet shortage of transfusion technicians
Mihika Basu
Mumbai, July 26: TO tide over the current shortage of well-trained blood bank technicians, the Maharashtra State Board of Technical Education (MSBTE) has decided to start a Post-Graduate Diploma in Blood Bank Technology and Management.
Blood transfusion services have gained importance with the discovery of AIDS. Untreatable blood-borne diseases bring the need for well-documented and regularised training for personnel in transfusion medicine which is lagging in India today, said Dr Yogini Patel, the main coordinator of the course.
The course will be conducted at BSES Municipal General Hospital. The hospital and the blood bank has already been inspected and approved by MSBTE.
Patel added that while the present mandatory qualification for blood bank technicians is a PGDMLT/MLT, the courses do not focus on blood bank details due to the short training period during internship and the strict regulations of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Only licensed technicians who are FDA approved can work in a blood bank. Also, in the current courses, students need further training for a year to be fully approved by FDA as a technician.
The MSBTE course, however, will train students inside the blood bank for one year. This will enable the trained technicians to comply the FDA requirement of one-year of training period inside the blood bank. Subsequently, students will be absorbed directly as regular technicians on completion of the course.
This course will enable blood banks to have well-trained manpower from day one as compared to the current PGDMLT/MLT courses, added Dr Patel.
Transfusion medicine experts form several reputed blood banks and the FDA constitute the faculty for the Directorate of Technical Education and have evolved the curriculum based on the new standards for transfusion medicine laid by the National Board of Hospital and Healthcare Accreditation (NABH). Further, the inputs for the curriculum have been given by the blood safety section of the National AIDS Control Society (NACO). The course has also been approved by the State Blood Transfusion Council and the National Blood Transfusion Group.
The recent advances in quality systems are now been focused at international standards and need to be introduced to the blood bank personnel.
Keeping the factors in mind, the course has been designed to teach the entire technology and management for graduates and help master quality systems and documentation required in transfusion medicine at international standards. This, said Patel, would also open doors for our students in blood banks abroad at international standards.
MSBTE will offer a full-time diploma of 12 months and a part-time diploma of 18 months duration with 40 seats each. Graduates in science, biology, chemistry, botany, microbiology, biotechnology applied biology and other allied biology subjects are qualified to enroll.