Components Of Human Blood

DCGI authorises Zonal offices to grant renewal licences for blood banks

In a major step towards improving the blood banking system in the country, the office of the Central Licence Approving Authority (CLAA) under directorate general of health services has decentralized the power of renewal of licences to blood banks with effect from June 20.
 
Under the new system, a section of powers has been delegated to the zonal officers of CDSCO to sign, on behalf of the CLAA, renewal certificates for the operation of blood banks which process whole human blood IP and its components.

However, fresh or renewal of licences for manufacture of blood products shall continue to remain with the CLAA. The circular warns that the signing of certificates of renewal by the zonal officers should be exercised only in those cases that were granted or renewed at an earlier stage by the CLAA.

In case the licence has not been granted or renewed previously by the CLAA, such licences cannot be signed by the deputies in the zonal offices, and they should be forwarded to the central CDSCO office for further action.

The DCGI as CLAA, by exercising the powers conferred under rule 122 L of the drugs and cosmetics rules, 1945, issued a circular in this regard on June 4 which says that the delegation of powers empowered to the zonal offices has come into force from June 20, this year. The order will be in  force till June 30, 2012.

According to information received from reliable sources, the main purpose of delegation of powers is to decentralize the process for quick disposal of licensing of blood banks as well as to improve the blood banking system in the country. For this, the deputy drug controllers in the CDSCO offices should visit periodically the concerned state licensing authorities as well as the stale blood transfusion councils to devise better ways to improve the system.

For improvement of the system, the CLAA has given some instructions to the zonal officers. The circular, signed by Dr Surinder Singh gives special instruction that a separate record should be made concerning request received on renewal of licences from the VIPs, and such records should be sent regularly to his office.

Since the order has come into force, all the state licensing authorities will henceforth forward the applications to the regional CDSCO offices. The deputy drug controllers in the CDSCO zonal offices will act on behalf of the CLAAs.

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Could electronic components made from human blood be the key to creating cyborg interfaces? Circuitry that links human tissues and nerve cells directly to an electronic 7m device, such as a robotic 7m limb or artificial eye might one day be possible thanks to the development of biological components.

Writing in the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics, a team in India describes how a "memristor" can be made using human blood. Memristors were a theoretical electronic component 7m first suggested in 1971 by Berkeley electrical engineer Leon Chua and finally developed in the laboratory by scientists at Hewlett Packard using titanium dioxide in 2008. A memristor is a passive device, like a resistor, with two terminals but rather than having a fixed electrical resistance, its ability to carry a current changes depending on the voltage applied previously; it retains a memory of the current, in other words.

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