Red Cross office ransacked by irate crowd

NELLORE: The district office of Indian Red Cross Society was ransacked here on Monday by a group of people alleging that the IRCS supplied HIV-infected blood to a pregnant woman.Irate relatives of the woman, who came along with their friends and neighbours from Venkateswarapuram in the city, staged a dharna before the IRCS Blood Bank while some of them entered into an argument with the staff of the blood bank, alleging that the woman turned HIV positive after injection of the blood supplied by the IRCS blood bank. The staff, however, stoutly denied the charge.The relatives met IRCS officials and told them that they were responsible for the woman getting HIV infection. IRCS officials maintained that they were adopting sophisticated methods of testing the blood received from donors and, as such, there was no scope for  unsafe blood being supplied from the IRCS blood bank.Not satisfied with the explanation of the officials and blood bank staff, the mob smashed the glass panes of the office and damaged the furniture, forcing the staff to run for safety. From there the mob  went to the collectorate and staged a dharna there before submitting a memorandum to the district collector. The relatives said that the woman, who had been admitted for delivery to a private hospital, required three units of blood which they got from the IRCS blood bank on the night of November 2. The woman, a native of Venkateswarapuram in the city, is married to a man from Saidapuram mandal and came to her parents’ house in October for delivery.Recently, she fell ill and suffered from fever after delivery, forcing the parents to take her to the same hospital where she was admitted for delivery. In the diagnostic tests, she was found to be HIV positive, shocking the woman and her parents.IRCS district secretary AV Subrahmanayam maintained that there was no scope for supply of HIV-infected blood from its blood bank and said  the district IRCS had, in its long history, never faced such allegation. Yet, he said, he wrote to the governor, who is IRCS state chairman, and to the collector, who is the district IRCS chairman, to conduct a probe into the allegations made by the relatives of the woman.