Blood on black market in Venezuela

VENEZUELA: An illicit market for human blood has sprung up in Venezuela amid economic collapse and a desperate shortage of safe supplies in hospitals.

Selling blood is illegal but a combination of desperate patients and impoverished doctors – many of whom earn less than NZ$5.80 a month – means the practice has become commonplace.

Adriana Ramirez’s father, who has a brain tumour, entered the operating theatre in Caracas three times only to be told at the last minute that life-saving surgery was not possible because of a lack of blood. The family went to one of the few private clinics that does have supplies, and bought four bags. Each 250ml costs about $4, more than Venezuela’s monthly minimum salary.

‘‘I’m not happy with what I did, but I had to do it because my dad could die,’’ she said.

There are 344 blood banks in Venezuela and 70 per cent of them are in crisis, according to the Society of Haematology. A lack of the reagents used to screen whether the blood is safe from diseases such as hepatitis or HIV, and which only the Ministry of Health can supply, means that even with adequate donations most blood is going to waste.

The crisis has been exacerbated because the number of people with illnesses requiring blood transfusions has risen, another consequence of the collapse in the economy.

Malaria, which Venezuela managed to eradicate from all its population centres in the 1960s, has returned with a vengeance. A lack of anti-malarial medication and a rise in the number of illegal gold miners following the collapse of the currency has created an epidemic. Cases rose 75 per cent last year. Severe cases of the anaemia associated with malaria are treated with blood transfusions.

Hospitals say that officials warned them privately last year that a lack of resources at a national level meant bloodscreening reagents were running out.