Mr Ugochukwu Obiakor is the Chief Executive Officer, LifeBank Nigeria. In this interview by SADE OGUNTOLA, he X-rays the challenges of regulating the supply of blood and blood products.
WHY did you start this work and how important is access to blood and blood products in medical care?
I have been a practising pharmacist for over 15 years. Since I was a kid, I always wanted to be in the health care space majorly because I lived with family members who had some medical conditions and were on medications. I moved to LifeBank to support people to get access to blood, medical oxygen, and quality health care that they need, among other reasons.
Access to blood and blood products in health care is very critical. Blood is life; if you don’t have blood, you are as good as dead. If you don’t have enough of it too, your life is also at risk. It is not just having access to blood; the quality of the blood is also a factor that can determine how healthy you could be. When recovering from an illness, the quality and quantity of the blood will also determine the recovery rate and survival.
Blood and blood products are very important in medical care, especially in situations where people lose blood during surgery, childbirth or during accidents.
Based on LifeBank’s experience, how will you describe access to blood and blood products in Nigeria?
Access to blood and blood products is not where it should be in Nigeria; there are still a lot of challenges around it. There is a lack of proper structure regarding access to blood; regulatory mechanisms around blood and blood products are poor, and blood and blood products are not so cheap. Of course, facilities to synthesise blood products are only in a few places.
How has LifeBank helped to increase access to blood and blood products in Nigeria?
At LifeBank, we come in to bridge and improve access to blood and blood products for patients who need them. We help hospitals discover blood banks with blood and blood products through our tech platform, we then deliver to the hospital in a record time using our multimodal transport system equipped with standard cold chain systems. What this means is that we use the best transport system possible to ensure the products get to the hospital on time and in the right condition. We also ensure we work only with registered blood banks, and we work with the various national and state blood transfusion agencies on programmes to encourage people to donate blood so that there will be a continuous supply of blood, and we can then save more lives across the country.
How do you ensure that the blood you supply is safe?
At LifeBank, we work only with government accredited private blood banks, with accredited screening facilities as well as the public or government ones with centralised blood bank screening facilities. In places like Lagos, there is a centralised blood screening policy that ensures they carry out proper screening of the blood before we deliver it to patients. In Lagos, before blood is transfused, it must have gone through the government accredited screening centre and be termed as safe before we supply it. Any blood bank, private hospital or clinic that gives any blood that has not passed through any of the state government’s accredited screening centres gets severely penalised. On our own part, we are pioneering an innovative solution to help to improve access to safe blood and blood products through our platform. We have also developed SmartBag, a block chain-based product tracking blood transfusions from vein to vein. It enables hospitals to check the safety record of transfusions. Though still in trial, it is one of the ways we are contributing to blood safety in Africa.
What are the challenges you are facing on the field while working on ensuring access to safe blood?
We started operation in 2016 and till now we have distributed over 40,000 pints of blood all across the country but many of the hospitals we serve cater to patients from low-income communities. We use a cross-subsidisation model to charge the prices they can afford. In addition, we have set up the Blood and Oxygen Access Trust (BOAT) to finance medical supplies to poor people.
Are you able to access different blood groups, including the rare blood group types?
Yes, we have established a network of over 100 blood banks and recruited over 7,000 blood donors. We scan around among the network of blood banks to get any type of blood group required and we use our multimodal transport system to ensure that we deliver it quickly by our motorcycles, tricycles and in some places, like the riverine areas, we also have boats to supply. All of these are to ensure that we get to the last mile.
Assuming somebody needs blood and requires your service, how can you be contacted?
We have various channels through which patients who need blood can get across to us, our call centre operates round the clock; we can also be reached via our social media platforms. Requests for blood are only accepted when it is made by the hospital and a call or contact from the hospital sets the ball rolling from our end.
Blood is life and people believe that it should be free. But, still, people are asked to pay for blood and donate in hospitals when they have patients that are sick and require blood transfusion?
In actual fact, blood is free. However, some costs like screening and logistics are accrued in ensuring the blood is certified safe and delivered in good condition.
In years to come where do you see your outfit in ensuring safe blood and access to safe blood?
We are already doing this; we only get blood from accredited blood banks, and also the safety bag service we provide that I mentioned earlier. Our mission is to save lives and we are committed to doing so by ensuring only safe blood is gotten from us. Alongside this, we are partnering with government agencies to improve regulation on blood screening and donation to ensure that any blood given to every patient is safe.
How has your contribution helped women in labour and in reducing Nigeria’s maternal mortality?
Even though we have evolved into a medical logistics company more broadly, LifeBank was founded in 2016 to support mothers suffering from postpartum haemorrhage – a condition where women just continue to bleed after childbirth. In Nigeria, this is a leading cause of maternal mortality. We save the lives of these women by delivering medical supplies like blood, medicines, vaccines and oxygen across all regions in Nigeria. We ensure the availability, affordability, and accessibility of critical medical supplies for them using data analytics, agile logistics, and our cross-subsidisation model. Since its inception, we have saved the lives of over 20,000 women.
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