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Health, Andile Tshuma

Whether it’s used for surgery, trauma, or other life-threatening medical conditions, blood can provide hope to patients.

This year, World Blood Donor Day was once again celebrated around the world yesterday. The event serves to thank voluntary, unpaid blood donors for their life-saving gifts of blood and also to raise awareness of the need for regular blood donations to ensure that all individuals and communities have access to affordable and timely supplies of safe and quality-assured blood and blood products as an integral part of universal health coverage and a key component of effective health systems.

Bulawayo was painted red yesterday with festivities going on as the city marked World Blood Donor Day, with the National Blood Services of Zimbabwe Southern Region Public Relations Officer Mr Sifundo Ngwenya doing the most and wowing crowds, as usual. 

Zimbabwe has made great strides in ensuring that all people have access to blood whenever they need it. One of the greatest moves that the Government has made in availing health access to all is through ensuring that blood is available free of charge at public institutions. Prior to this move, it was difficult for some people to access the life giving liquid as it was costly. However, now that it has been made free, it is still the mandate of every Zimbabwean to ensure that we keep the blood bank stocked so that whenever the need arises, we can all benefit.

Transfusion of blood and blood products save millions of lives every year. Blood and blood products are essential components in the proper management of women suffering from bleeding associated with pregnancy and childbirth; children suffering from severe anaemia due to malaria and malnutrition; patients with blood and bone marrow disorders, inherited disorders of haemoglobin and immune deficiency conditions; victims of trauma, emergencies, disasters and accidents; as well as patients undergoing advanced medical and surgical procedures. 

Although the need for blood and blood products is universal, there is a marked difference in the level of access to safe blood and blood products across and within countries. In many countries, blood services face the additional challenge of making sufficient blood and blood products available, while also ensuring its quality and safety.

In May 2005, during the 58th World Health Assembly, health ministers from across the world, including Zimbabwe, made a unanimous declaration of commitment and support towards voluntary blood donation. Through a resolution, they designated World Blood Donor Day as an annual event to be held each year on June 14. The resolution furthermore urges member states to implement, and support well organised, nationally coordinated and sustainable blood programmes with appropriate regulatory oversight. 

The support requires that governments provide adequate financing for high quality blood donation services and for the expansion of these services so that sufficient, safe blood can be collected to meet the needs of patients. In 2009, experts in transfusion medicine, policy-makers and non-governmental representatives from 40 countries formulated the Melbourne Declaration, which set up a goal for all countries to obtain all their blood supplies from voluntary unpaid donors by 2020.

In Zimbabwe, Government scraped fees for blood in June 2018 as it reaped rewards from the launch of the Health Levy Fund. Notable is the fact that the country is still behind in meeting the Abuja Declaration of allocating 15 percent of the government’s budget towards health. Health insurance covers less than 10 percent of the population, an out of pocket expenditure of over 39 percent of all health expenditure leading to financial impoverishment for many Zimbabweans. However such developments show that efforts are being made to meet the Abuja Declaration and in time, there is hope that the terms of the declaration will be met. The theme for this year’s campaign was “Blood donation and universal access to safe blood transfusion, as a component of achieving universal health coverage”. 

The World Health Organisation developed the slogan “Safe blood for all” to raise awareness of the universal need for safe blood in the delivery of health care and the crucial roles that voluntary donations play in achieving the goal of universal health coverage. 

The theme strongly encourages more people all over the world to become blood donors and donate blood regularly, actions which are key to building a strong foundation of sustainable national blood supplies that are sufficient to meeting the needs of all patients requiring transfusion.

The day and the theme are also a call to action to all governments, national health authorities and national blood services to provide adequate resources and put in place systems and infrastructure to increase collection of blood from voluntary, regular unpaid blood donors; to provide quality donor care; to promote and implement appropriate clinical use of blood, and to set up systems for the oversight and surveillance on the whole chain of blood transfusion.

World Blood Donor Day is meant to celebrate and thank individuals who donate blood and to encourage those who have not yet donated blood to start donating, highlight the need for committed, year-round blood donation, to maintain adequate supplies and achieve universal and timely access to safe blood transfusion, focus attention on donor health and the quality of donor care as critical factors in building donor commitment and a willingness to donate regularly and to demonstrate the need for universal access to safe blood transfusion and provide advocacy on its role in the provision of effective health care and in achieving the goal of universal health coverage. It is also meant to mobilise support at national, regional and global levels among governments and development partners to invest in, strengthen and sustain national blood programmes.

If you know one blood donor, value them, and if you are blood donor, thank you and God bless you. You have saved the lives of people that you may never meet in your lifetime, a part of you lives in someone because of the lifeline you extended. I don’t think anything can express humanity more than giving the gift of life to the next person. 

The best way to celebrate World Blood Donor Day is to go out and give blood! There’s a need for blood of all types and there’s rarely enough of it to go around. Just a single contribution now and then will help save lives, so get on out there and give. – @andile_tshuma