Your health is refreshed each time you donate blood — Amedu

In this interview by SADE OGUNTOLA, acting director-general of the National Blood Service Commission, Dr. Omale Joseph Amedu, encourages regular voluntary donation of blood among Nigerians, saying it is health-giving and live-saving

T HE campaign slogan for the 2023 World Blood Donor Day is ‘Give blood, give plasma, share life, share often’. What is the significance of this?

Giving blood is a huge sacrifice that is unquantifiable in terms of financial cost. One cannot buy blood because blood is life. The World Health Organization earmarked the 14th of June every year to celebrate those that donate blood voluntarily to save others. It is important and that is why this year’s slogan is ‘Give blood, give plasma, share life, share often’. Blood is freely collected from individual donors. Whole blood can be separated into its components; one of its components is plasma. The others include red cell concentrate and platelets. But a donor can donate a unit of whole blood or plasma. Plasma is used specifically for some patients.

Like the World Blood Donor Day’s theme, we are asking Nigerians that are fit to please give blood or plasma to save lives. By donating blood or plasma, you are saving a life. You are sharing your life with that person. You are sharing your good health, fortune, love and compassion by donating blood and plasma. We are also asking that they should share their blood as often as possible and as long as you are alive and well within the blood donating age. Men can donate every three months while women donate every four months.

 

Annually, how much blood and plasma does Nigeria need for medical care?

WHO says that every nation requires at least one percent blood units of its population; so, if Nigeria’s population is 200 million, then we require a minimum of two million blood units to be able to meet the need for blood in Nigeria every year. This can be in the form of whole blood or even plasma. These include cases of women that suffer post-partum hemorrhage after birth, sickle cell patients, cancer patients and accident victims that need blood to survive.

We do not have close to this required volume of blood; we don’t even have 500,000 units of safe blood both in the public and private sector in the country. Therefore, the message of this World Blood Donor Day is that we require a minimum of two million blood units to enable us to preserve the lives of Nigerians. Nigerians should understand that they need to voluntarily donate blood; they should also give plasma so that we can get closer to the minimum requirement for the nation. Several people are dying because there is no blood and blood products across the country and that is why the message is “Give blood, give plasma, share life, share often’.

The National Blood Service Commission has been mandated by the Federal Government to ensure regulation and coordination of every blood service provider in the country as well as to make sure that blood is available in every corner of Nigeria so that the pregnant woman in labour that requires blood in the remotest part of Nigeria will get blood as soon as possible.

 

What do individuals stand to benefit from sharing their blood and sharing it often?

A good example to illustrate this is the car engine. After driving a car for some time, the engine requires servicing. By servicing the car, the engine gets refreshed and it picks up functions better. Blood is produced by the body system and if it is not flushed out of the body, it will usually die by 120 days. The body has a way of removing these dead cells through the liver. So, when you give blood, you are allowing fresh blood to come into your body system. As such, donating regularly guarantees you get healthier than those who are not donating because more body tissues and organs get supplied with fresh blood. This is good for your health. Again, by donating, it clears off the old blood cells. Of course, each time you donate blood, we test you and so you stand the chance of knowing your health indexes, such as the blood group, hemoglobin level, blood pressure, blood sugar level, HIV status, hepatitis status and other parameters. If any of these health indexes is negative, we then send you to other centres for confirmation and appropriate treatment, with subsequent free medical advice on how to keep healthy. Again, when you donate regularly, it is also part of one’s national commitment to make Nigeria a great country and to keep its population growing and in good health. So, donating blood is a sacrifice that is encouraged to save other lives.

 

Generally, there are different blood groups. Which ones are rare and will require more efforts from Nigerians to make more available?

The rare blood groups are those with rhesus negative. Again, we are not specific on what kind of blood that is donated because every blood group is needed across the country. Having people donate units of the rare blood group is not the issue. As people donate, centres for blood services across the country keep a data of those with the rare blood groups, so we can easily call them up any time there is a need for units of the rare blood groups. That has resolved the issue of access to units of very rare blood groups not being available.

 

Are there challenges and myths in Nigeria still preventing enough blood units in our blood banks? How are you working on solving them?

Myths and misconceptions of blood donation are rife in Nigeria. For instance, people see those working in blood services as people who drink blood and are into cults. Women say that blood donation will prevent them from getting pregnant; men say that donating blood will prevent them from having a satisfactory sexual life; if they donate blood, their forefathers will be angry; and that there is spiritual involvement with donating blood. All these are false. It requires a lot of sensitization and advocacy as well as the Nigerian press to explain that these are myths and that we require people to voluntarily donate blood because we cannot continue to watch people dying endlessly because there is no blood in the blood banks. Even the blood that you don’t donate will expire in a few days and might even cause you ill health, so why not donate blood?

In fact, regular blood donation supports good sperm production and its ability to fertilize the female’s eggs. So blood donation has no bad effect because you will undergo medical screening first to make sure that you are fit to donate. If you are not qualified, nobody will touch you. Some people also believe that if they donate blood they will faint. No, that is not right. When people donate blood, we usually give them water and soft drinks to take immediately to increase their blood volume. Also, there is a medical team on the standby to take care of any adverse effects that individuals donating blood might encounter in the course of the procedure.

 

Many health practitioners in the community still give whole blood even when it is not required. What is being done to stop this and to maximize available blood and blood products for medical care?

The past government under the leadership of President Buhari saw it that blood service should be regulated, coordinated and ensure that certain criteria are met before the transfusion of blood. So, we have been teaching and encouraging health practitioners to be mindful of the best clinical use of blood. You don’t unnecessarily give blood when blood is not needed. We are also telling them to understand the need to use blood products like plasma, red cell concentrates and platelets rather than transfusing whole blood. Each person requiring blood requires a specific ingredient in the whole blood; it is this ingredient that we are advocating that they should give. That is the best practice. Again, we require the media, hospitals and health practitioners to help ensure appropriate clinical use of blood and blood products.

 

What is your commission doing to build a national blood donor programme that will ensure safe and secure blood supplies?

Since the coming of the National Blood Service Commission Act in 2021, a lot of work has been done by the commission to ensure that blood service is properly regulated and coordinated, so that from a national data across the country, we can know how much blood is being given in Nigeria, quantity of available blood products like plasma and platelets and where in the country we have these blood and blood products. This is in a bid to ensure availability of blood and blood products. We are having conversations with partners and stakeholders to see how they can go into the business of blood service, in the sense that they can convert whole blood to blood products. If these products are available across the country, that is accessibility and that is safe blood product quality. We are working towards this gradually. Of course, we are putting in place standard operating procedures for blood and blood product use, and a lot of capacity building is going on across the country on this as well as sensitization on the need for adequate and safe blood across the country. This is why the commission is having two initiatives to ensure blood adequacy and safety in the nation. The first, the one million safe blood initiative, is to ensure that Nigeria will have a minimum of one million safe blood units. If this is achieved, we will be able to get about five million units of safe blood housed across the country towards what we call a National Strategic Blood Reserve to be established in the six geopolitical zones. So, at any time there is need for large quantities of blood to be used, signals are sent to the centres and with approvals for the high command releases to be used anywhere in the country.

The new government needs to understand that blood is central and critical to medical practice in the world, inclusive of Nigeria. This part of healthcare needs to be funded adequately because blood is life and life has no duplicate. If you visit any teaching hospital, every medical service that is offered to any patient is blood-related. Blood is required everywhere, even before putting a patient to sleep in a theater before surgery.