NEW DELHI: Why should we pretend to know medical science, the Supreme Court said on Friday while refusing to entertain a petition seeking mandatory nucleic acid amplification testing in all blood banks to ensure supply of infection-free blood to recipients.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justice Joymalia Bagchi asked the petitioner Sarvesham Mangalam Foundation to provide comprehensive representation to the health ministers of states and union territories on the issue.
The Secretary may, with the assistance and advice of field experts, take an appropriate decision on this issue, the agency said.
“Do you think that political isolation projects are not funded from abroad? Do you think so?” The CJI told the petitioner’s counsel during the hearing.
The court said that the petitioner must go and appear before the authorities.
“We are definitely not experts on this subject…why do we pretend that we know medical science,” the CJI said.
The Supreme Court observed that it is the domain experts who decide what kind of tests should be conducted in blood banks.
The bench said, in the absence of any expert knowledge of the matter, that it was satisfied that the court could not issue any directions as desired by the petitioner.
She said the nature of the relief sought in the petition has financial implications and each state has its own financial constraints.
On February 25, the Supreme Court sought more details like costs and availability of facility to conduct NAT in government hospitals across India to detect transfusion-borne infections such as HIV and hepatitis.
The bench asked advocate A. Velan, representing the PIL petitioner, to provide details on how much cost would be incurred in conducting NAT tests and whether the facility would be available in government hospitals so that the poor could also benefit from it.
The Foundation has made the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and all states and union territories parties to the appeal.
The PIL sought an order to the Center and states to declare that the “right to safe blood” is an intrinsic aspect of the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.
It also sought directions “to implement mandatory NAT in all blood banks across the territory of India to detect transfusion-transmitted infections, including HIV, hepatitis C virus, hepatitis B virus, malaria and syphilis, in blood collected from all donors, to ensure supply of safe and infection-free blood to all recipients.”
The Delhi-based NGO highlighted the state’s “systematic and persistent failure” to protect vulnerable patients, especially those with thalassemia, from life-threatening TTI diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. Thalassemia is a genetic blood disorder that requires patients to undergo blood transfusions every 15 to 20 days in order to survive.
However, for thousands in India, such blood transfusions have become a “gamble with death,” the petition said.
“Thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder caused by the body’s inability to produce enough hemoglobin, the protein found in red blood cells that transports oxygen from the lungs to the tissues and carbon dioxide to the lungs. Since India is the thalassemia capital of the world, there is a need to enhance blood safety practices across the country… especially the need for a standardized test to screen blood donors.”
The PIL cited a series of “preventable tragedies” across the country and said that in Madhya Pradesh, in 2025, at least six children with thalassemia tested positive for HIV after blood transfusions at a Satna district hospital.
In Jharkhand, five children were infected with HIV after blood transfusions at Sadar Hospital in Chibasa in 2025, she said, adding that in Uttar Pradesh, 14 children were infected with hepatitis C and HIV in a medical college in 2023.
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