Blood supply shortage likely in Zamboanga del Sur, Lanao provinces after PRC facility fire

The structure after fire engulfed the building which housed the Philippine Red Cross–Pagadian City Chapter, Integrated Provincial Health Office and the Department of Health Provincial Office.

PAGADIAN CITY — The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) here has sounded an alarm against a temporary shortage in blood supply in northwestern Mindanao after its facility was partially gutted by fire before midnight on Sunday and which raged on until 3 AM on Monday.

Dr. Reynaldo Ortiz, PRC chapter head in this city, said blood supply would likely run out in areas that depended on PRC for their supply as the humanitarian institution temporarily stopped its operation to assess the damage wrought by the fire that broke out in its building.

He was referring to Zamboanga del Sur and parts of the Lanao provinces, which mainly depended for their blood supply on the regional blood processing center in Pagadian City. The next blood processing centers are in the cities of Cagayan de Oro and Zamboanga.

PRC occupied part of the second floor of the building within the Zamboanga del Sur provincial government center in Barangay Dao. The fire was believed to have started at the maintenance hall on the ground floor, directly below the IPHO office, which occupied the building’s second floor space next to PRC. The fire was declared out at 3:10 a.m. on Monday, November 1.

Ortiz said PRC’s on-duty personnel were able to secure both the processed and unprocessed blood supplies at the height of the fire and had distributed these to different hospitals, which had cold storage facilities for such items.

But the remaining blood supply that is ready to use can only last for a week, he said.

Ortiz said they were most concerned about the blood supply in the coming weeks as they temporarily stopped processing.

PRC’s blood processing center here is only one of the two such facilities approved by the Department of Health (DOH) in region 9. The other facility is in Zamboanga City.

Aside from the PRC lobby which was destroyed, the fire also damaged some of PRC’s laboratory equipment, especially those with plastic parts and wirings, which could not withstand heat. “The bulk of the machines are okay but (they) still need to be checked,” Ortiz said.

“We cannot check the machines as of now or in the next few days. With the damaged wirings inside the building, they were all cut off and needed re-wirings,” he added.

PRC, however, could still conduct the RT-PCR testing since they only needed a safe space for specimen collection, though they would have to transport the items to the Zamboanga City Molecular Laboratory, Ortiz said.

The fire which also affected parts of the DOH provincial office and the Integrated Provincial Health Office (IPHO) also destroyed supplies of COVD-19 vaccines and other routine vaccines, according to Dr. Anatalio Cagampang Jr., chief of the Zamboanga del Sur Medical Center (ZDSMC). Cagampang, also the IPHO chief, said the damaged vaccines included AstraZeneca, Moderna, Pfizer and Sinovac and other routine vaccines for hepatitis, measles and polio.

EDV