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The Tory principle of privatising everything and thus making profit for the rich, greedy and powerful from human misery continues as the tory-led ConDem(ned) government put the supply of Blood Plasma out to private tender via a merchant bank! The importance of the issue cannot be underestimated for the health of people in this country. As campaigner Mr Geoff Dunbar explains in his petition at 38 Degrees Campaigns By You website: "Blood and Plasma are obviously ‘joined at the hip’. When a donor gives a pint of blood, 55% of that fluid by volume is plasma. Much of today’s service is about producing blood and plasma products for the treatment of a wide range of patients. Treatments using plasma products are no less important than those using blood products. You have only to ‘google’ medical uses of plasma to find out the wonderful way its products can influence patients lives, such as the treatment folk suffering from burns, shock and major trauma; immune disorders and neurological conditions; protecting unborn children from haemolytic diseases. Possibly best known plasma product is Factor VIII used to treat around 3,000 haemophilia patients."
If Bain Int'l is successful, it will herald the introduction of American companies into the UK's Blood based services, along with the risk of cuts in standards and contamination of supplies. The cost to the NHS will also increase as profit margins will be added to the charges made by the company winning the tender. ultimately, that will increase national insurance contributions and mean that blood donors will be donating financially to the profits of the company. It will also open up Blood product services to European competition law. Concern has also been raised in Parliament by Labour Party MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Frank Dobson along with Plaid Cymru MP, Hywel Williams who have sponsored the following Early Day Motion opposing the sell-off and hence the introduction of yet again another American-style healthcare issue: EDM1164 That this House notes the Government has put the state-owned Plasma Resources UK (PRUK) out to a merchant bank to arrange its privatisation despite the fact that PRUK was originally purchased to safeguard the British plasma supply after the BSE crisis left the UK unable to harvest safe plasma from its own population, as most developed countries do; further notes that without PRUK the UK will be left buying its plasma supplies on the open market where there are supply chain issues of the sort that saw horses being re-labelled as beef; believes this penny-pinching neglect of safety procedures in the collection of plasma may well lead to an increased risk of infection; and calls on the Government to cancel immediately the instruction to sell PRUK and guarantee that this company will instead be held in perpetuity to protect the health of the people of the UK. The whole question of the safety of blood plasma is now up in the air again, as the public forget about the previous scandals of contaminated blood resources being administered to UK patients via an American supplier of Blood plasma which had not been subjected to the same rigorous screening processes used in British blood products. With hundreds of people at the time being given contaminated blood, HIV Aids was one of the consequences that many patients ended up having to endure. But once again our great TV news media ignores this further privatisation of healthcare services. But before you ignore this news item and think it has nothing to do with me, please remember that any operation due to illness or an accident may require you to be given copious amounts of blood, blood plasma; and places you at risk of your system being contaminated with to the detriment of your health. You can ask your MP, to support this EDM and stop the privatisation of the nations blood plasma supplies. To find your MP's address and contact details go to the MP listings website here Sign the petition against the the privatisation of blood plasma services here Source: Dr Jacky Davis / Twitter / Parliament UK website / unionsafety |
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Further in an email to Unionsafety, Geoff adds that Bain Int'l (where Mitt Romney made millions as an asset stripper) and Biotest AG (who not so long ago lost their licence to produce plasma products) are among the first round bidders.