Blood shortage bites harder with subsidy removal

AS Nigeria joins the rest of the globe to mark World Blood Donor Day (WBDD), blood shortage may be worsened with the country having only five percent of voluntary non-remunerated blood donors, increased service charge for units of blood and dearth of blood bags for blood storage across the country.

Acting South West Zonal director, National Blood Service Commission (NBSC), Dr Oladapo Aworanti, speaking at the 2023 World Blood Donor Day (WBDD) at the agency’s south west zonal centre, said Nigeria has not been able to meet her transfusion needs as the number of voluntary non-remunerated blood donors is less than five per cent of the total number of donors.

He declared that most of these voluntary non-remunerated blood donors, are also not regular with their donation, most donate once in one or two years, making it quite difficult to support the transfusion service in Nigeria by them.

“It is quite difficult to support the transfusion service of our country when you are not a regular donor. So, we are using this opportunity to speak to our known donors to be regular and those not in the pool of voluntary blood donors to please seize this opportunity to donate blood, it is part of sharing lives and sharing often.”

Dr Aworanti, reacting to the increase in service charge for accessing units of blood from the centre, said it was not intentional but was important to ensure that the centre could continue to have in its bank safe units of blood.

“We just increased the service charge for our unit of blood. All these are not intentional. There is no way we can remain functional without resources. We need to do blood drives, the trip that we budgeted N25, 000 for we end up spending N100, 000 on fuel because of petrol subsidy removal.

“We now run on generators; we run investigations on each unit of blood and rely on imported reagents to do these tests. That is why we added a few thousands to what the service charge used to be. We also want to do more but we also have our challenges.”

Dr Aworanti said availability and cost of blood bags have become a challenge.

“About four weeks ago, there was an emergency meeting between the acting DG and the acting zonal directors and we were unable to get blood bags in Nigeria. A pack of the bag that we used to buy for N86,000 went to N400,000. Now, with the petrol subsidy removal it would have further gone up. So, now that we have removed the subsidy on each unit of blood, there is no way the service charge will not change.

“That is why we are also getting problems with ensuring private facilities into blood services abide by the NBSC rules now. They will rather use the rapid kit to screen units of blood rather than the ELISA because that is the only way they can compete favourably in cost with NBSC.”

Partners at the WBDD celebrations, including World Health Organization (WHO), APIN plus Public Health Initiative and Rotary Clubs in Ibadan all pledged support for blood donation drives, asking individuals to see blood donation as life saving.