Low Awareness Adversely Impacting Volunteer Blood Donation in Ethiopia: Blood Bank

Addis  Ababa  November  5/2019 Lack of education coupled with low awareness adversely impacting on efforts to enlist non-remunerators blood donors in Ethiopia, National Blood Bank said. 
Blood Bank Service Deputy Director, Yaregal Bantie told ENA that fear and public awareness as well as lack of institutional frameworks is strong deterrents that hampered volunteer blood donation across the country.

To meet the country’s over 100 million people’s demand for blood, the Bank annually collects nearly 200,000 units of blood from non-remunerated donor.

The country needs 18,000 units of blood daily, the deputy director said, adding that the highest collected so far in just a day stands at 1,100 units.

Lack of effective education, awareness and misconception are some of the variable deterrents that are negatively impacting blood donation in Ethiopia, he pointed out.  

“The major problem is lack of awareness--awareness about blood is very low. Many people fear to donate blood but there are persons who donated blood over 1000 times in the world. In Ethiopia, we have some persons who donated 85 times,” Yaregal pointed out.

Blood donation has remained a challenge in developing countries, like Ethiopia where there is a high reliance on family surrogate and waged blood donors, Yaregal said.

It is the only source of blood but the recruitment of voluntary, non-remunerated donors is the major challenge throughout the country, he stated.

Researches indicate that blood donation practice of health professionals in Ethiopia is low as compared to many other countries.

Efforts to include blood donation in the educational curriculum over the past five years bore no fruit due to lack of integrated institutionalization.

“For the last five years we were trying to incorporate blood donation in the curriculum although the effort remained in vain because of lack of institutional basis between the Blood Bank and Ministry of Education. These efforts were merely at the leadership level and failed with the change in leadership,” he said.

Ethiopia launched a month-long national blood donation campaign last October under the theme: “Life for Life! Give Blood, Save Life” and collected some 14, 000 units of blood only in single day.

The Bank, which was able to collect 223, 000 units of blood last year, is working to realize its plan of collecting 310, 000 units this year.