Ten years of preoperative autologous blood donation in Accra

Background - Preoperative autologous blood donation (PABD) is utilized to circumvent the use of allogenic blood for various reasons. Objective - To describe the distribution in terms of demographic characteristic, trends in participation and result of screening test of the PABD programme of the Accra Area Blood Center from 1993-2003. Design and Setting Retrospective descriptive study of PABD in patients scheduled for a variety of elective surgical procedures. Setting- Different levels of institutional health care in Accra, Ghana.Methods Data from existing records of patients who had participated in PABD were collated and analyzed Results Five hundred and forty six (546) females and 89 males participated, with ages ranging between14-74 years. Majority of the patients (76.7%) underwent gynaecological surgery. A total of 330 (52%) donated one unit only, and 299 (47.1%) donated two units. Majority of the patients(56.4%) had the surgery at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH). Of the donations, 21 (3.3%), 1 (0.2%), 1 (0.3%) and nil were positivefor HBV, HIV I & II, HCV and VDRL respectively. A total of 848 (89.4%) autologous crossmatched units were issued out. There was a steady progressive increase in participation. Conclusion Mainly adult females scheduled for gynaecological surgeries in KBTH participated,while almost equal proportions donated one or two units of blood which meets the blood needs of most elective surgeries. Therefore healthy patients going for elective surgeries in regions with limited blood supply must be encouraged to enter a PABD Programme. Further studies in this field should evaluate motivational factors for participatio

How can 'Blood' collection agencies facilitate first time plasmapaheresis donation?

Background: Blood mobilization and collection agencies worldwide are challenged with blood donor recruitment and retention. When the demand for blood exceeds collection, there is inadequacy of supply and safety of the blood is also compromised. This challenge varies in severity between developed and developing countries. The median blood donation rates per 1000 population are 36.4 in high-income countries, 11.6 in middle-income countries and 2.8 in low-income countries. The World Health organization (WHO) African Regional Strategy, adopted in 2001, focuses on recruitment of low risk regular voluntary donors. But, even though blood from Voluntary Non-Remunerated Blood Donors (VNRBD) is safer than Family Replacement Donors (FRD), there is evidence that blood from first time VNRBD is not safer than FRD, and that only repeat donations provide improved blood safety. Therefore in developing models to increase repeat blood donations from existing donors, it is important to understand what will encourage the first time donor, whether VNRBD or FRD, to donate again, and the repeat donor to continue donating

SICKLE-CELL-ANEMIA AMONG ETI-TURKS - HEMATOLOGICAL, CLINICAL AND GENETIC OBSERVATIONS

WOS: A1986D906100005PubMed ID: 3756104…NHLBI NIH HHSUnited States Department of Health & Human ServicesNational Institutes of Health (NIH) - USANIH National Heart Lung & Blood Institute (NHLBI) [HLB-05168, HLB-15158