Money from the budget: The government will allocate 4.5 million Kuna for tissue typing blood samples this year “The Ana Rukavina Foundation is too important to politicize or to allow it to be jeopardized because of a slow system” said the Minister.
In addition to that, he also said that at yesterday’s session of the government, an amendment was passed which would allocate 4.5 million Kuna for tissue typing blood samples this year. Early next week the representatives of the Foundation will inform the Minister about the problems they are facing and they will try to reach a mutual solution.
Speed up the process
Last week, the representatives of the Foundation accused the Tissue Typing Center at Rebro of not honoring the agreement about the number of tissue typed samples from voluntary bone marrow donors and also, that they have been dragging their feet and have still not joined the European Registry which means that the Croatian tissue typing center is still not accessible for searches through the Worldwide Donor Registry.
At a meeting held on Monday of the Management and Supervisory Board of the Foundation, the Board of KBC (Rebro Hospital) was asked to speed up the process and fulfill the agreement about tissue typing another 1600 samples by 31 March.
Until today, the Foundation has invested nearly 4 million Kuna into the Registry, for example, toward the purchase of equipment and reagents, as well as to pay the medical professionals at Rebro who perform the tissue typing…
Rebro’s only task was to tissue type 3400 samples by today, however, they have only processed 1413 samples. The Foundation (which is solely financed by donations) will have to settle the bill which has been unnecessarily increased by 1.2 million Kuna.
There is really no excuse for Rebro that not one of the tissue typed providers has been entered into the European Registry.
The feeble explanation from KBC Zagreb (Rebro Hospital) as to why they have not honored their side of the agreement is because of an increased scope of work, a lack of equipment and that they never signed any type of agreement with the Foundation in terms of deadlines and numbers. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Unfavorable agreement
There was an oral agreement that, with the delivery of new equipment, 20 samples would be tissue typed a day, and with the implementation of new methods that number would increase to 90 samples a day. There are documents, in the possession of Jutarnji list, which were signed by the head of the Tissue Typing Center, Dr. Vesna Kerhin-Brkljačić.
The Foundation is aware of the fact that the contract signed with KBC is unfavorable for the Foundation because they must solely finance the work of the Registry and the Bank. KBC is not even obliged to invest even the money raised from the fees charged for the storage of the collected stem cells.
Source: Jutarnji list, March 5, 2008 – Journalist, Andrea Šantek