The case involving contaminated blood bags is preventing some concerned people from leaving the country. Reem Leila reports The Central Auditing Organisation (CAO) has presented its report to the People's Assembly regarding alleged contaminated blood bags manufactured by the Hayedelena for Advanced Medical Industries Company (HAMIC). Last Thursday, the People's Assembly's health and industry committees discussed the reported violations presented in the report committed by both the Health Ministry and HAMIC employees. Mohamed Abul-Enein, head of the two committees, refused to divulge details regarding the CAO report, saying it will focus on the bid procedures, accusations regarding the squandering of Health Ministry funds as well as the role of the Health Ministry's National Organisation for Drug Control and Research (NODCR), which accepted the blood bags when some 21 blood banks nationwide had refused to deal with the blood supplied from the company when it applied for tenders in 2005. During the Health and Industry committee meeting, parliament member Gamal Zahran accused MP Hani Sorour, CEO of HAMIC, of violating Article 95 of the constitution which forbids MPs from selling or buying any products or properties to or from government entities. HAMIC won the blood bag supply contract in August 2005, four months before Sorour became an MP. "But it started supplying the ministry with blood bags after joining parliament, thus violating the constitution," Zahran claimed. The issue caused public uproar after some 260,000 bags used to package donated blood were seized from the Ministry of Health. The story broke two months ago when Soheir El-Sharqawi and Sawsan Mursi, two Ministry of Health and Population employees, uncovered what they alleged said was foul play in a LE4 million deal between the ministry and Sorour over the manufacture of blood bags. The accord was to provide 300,000 blood bags to the nation's hospital system, even though 40,000 of them had been used. Armed with what they said were documented complaints from hospitals that had received allegedly adulterated bags, El-Sharqawi and Mursi went to the police with their information. The Public Funds Investigation Office later received technical reports from transfusion centres and blood banks in five university hospitals claiming the bags did not conform to specifications and were harmful to public health. More controversy followed after preliminary investigations found that a number of senior Health Ministry officials had been bribed by Sorour to accept the blood bags which ministry officials formerly reported to the prosecutor-general as containing bacteria and fungi and did not meet international standards. The blood was likely to harm patients in the event of transfusion. A public blood donation campaign has intensified to make up for the dramatic fall in the number of blood donors as a result of the story. Early this week, Prosecutor-General Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud banned 50 people connected with the issue from travelling abroad. Among them were Health Ministry employees and HAMIC officials, including the deputy HAMIC CEO, who is also Sorour's sister and HAMICs production line manager, factory manager and quality surveillance manager. Nearly 500 health officials and HAMIC employees have been part of a general prosecution investigation.
