Blood supply shortage

The National Referral Hospital’s blood bank is struggling to maintain a consistent supply of blood needed at the hospital.

This begun when the Red Cross supported blood donation program was halted due to lack of funding.

NRH Medical Lab Director, Alfred Dofai told SIBC News they were trying their best to keep voluntary blood donations running.

“The status of blood supply is very low for the simple reason that Red Cross that used to support us in terms of promotion, awareness and recruiting blood donors is having problems with funding issues,” he said.

“They are just waiting for any green lights so in the mean time only the Ministry of Health is trying to carry out the mobile blood donation to collect volunteer donors so we are struggling a bit with blood supply at the moment because that part has not progressed because of the difficulty faced by Red Cross.”

Mr Dofai said they were addressing the constant low blood supply by conducting mobile blood donation sessions at companies and institutions.

“At the moment we are conducting minor mobile sessions with companies and like today I just dropped off my blood mobile team at the Central Police Station,” he said.

“We are trying to cover up to collect enough numbers but then usually turn out is often low especially from voluntary donors so what we do is call on relatives, which is not encouraged but just to make numbers to meet the demand. At the moment relatives are turning up in numbers compared to a dropping number of volunteer donors.”

By: Rickson Bau.