Faulty Testing System

[Anchor Lead]

Fifteen years have passed since an HIV-tainted blood scandal erupted in 2003. Red Cross Korea has claimed that there hasn't been a single case of infection from blood transfusions since then, and that they have been managing blood supplies safely. However, KBS has recently learned that the testing system currently used by Red Cross Korea cannot fully detect the hepatitis C virus.

[Pkg]

Red Cross Korea has started a bid to find a new testing system to detect viruses in blood. A KBS reporting team analyzed the bidder assessment documents. However, one company's system failed the assessment for having been unable to detect the hepatitis C virus. That's the testing system currently used by Red Cross Korea. KBS has commissioned a European blood testing institution to test a blood sample from a Korean patient with the hepatitis C virus. The system used by Red Cross Korea failed to detect the virus.

[Soundbite] Jeremy Gautier(Senior Researcher)

Red Cross Korea says that it is conducting two types of tests and discards all blood if an anomaly is found in even one of those tests. Experts, however, disagree.

[Soundbite] Prof. Seol Dai-woo(Dept. of Pharmacy, Chung-Ang Univ.) : "The problem is that the machine itself is faulty, so we can't trust the results. They can run ten tests, but we can't trust the findings."

Although the current system cannot detect viruses properly, Red Cross Korea has been assessing the testing system with two lowered safety criteria, starting with this year's bid.