Materia Medica Malaysiana

Some private hospitals overcharging for blood

KUALA LUMPUR: Patients at some private hospitals are paying up to 10 times more for blood supplied from government blood banks.

Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek said that certain private hospitals were charging up between RM100 and RM200 per unit of blood, which costs them only RM20.

“We hope private hospitals who are getting blood from government hospitals should not become profiteers and we understand this is happening even though we are charging the minimum to private hospitals. The Government and ministry consider it a humanitarian service and necessity.

He said the RM20 was to cover storage and testing charges at the 112 government run bloodbanks in the country.

“When private hospitals require blood, we give it to them. There is no profit orientation. But some hospitals charge highly after they get it from us,” he told reporters yesterday after launching the Tunku Abdul Rahman College blood donation campaign.

He said, however, that such incidents were not rampant.

To a question, he said : “We cannot take action because there is no law. It is a free market.”

Dr Chua also said blood supply were sufficient for the coming holiday period but urged the public to continue donating as plasma (a blood component) could only last five days.

He said Malaysia was ranked among the top countries in the region in terms of voluntary blood donation and had surpassed the World Health Organisation requirement that 40% of donors should be voluntary.

“Some 98% of blood donors in Malaysia are volunteers.” During the press conference, he said that the ministry would investigate the case of a body which was stored in a freezer for 24 hours at the Ipoh Hospital while waiting for a forensic pathologist to arrive from Alor Star last December.

He also said that there was no shortage of forensic pathologists but clinical pathologists were insufficient with only 90 of the 150 vacancies in the government service filled.