Frazer Potani, AfricaNews reporter in Lilongwe, Malawi
No surgeon puts on a green gown, strap a mask round the mouth and nose and effect an operation on a patient on the operation table in the theatre without first making sure there is an adequate amount of this liquid in this special hospital room. Blood gives life as it facilitates the smooth running of human body systems.
It helps the system break down food (digestion), movement of blood itself (circulation), human production (reproductive), breathing (respiratory) and nervous system which coordinates the brain with organs of the body to function properly.
Despite the importance of blood, in Malawi however, the country’s blood banks are always thirsty for more blood due to low blood donations.
To encourage more people to donate blood to save lives in times of emergency, First Lady Madame Callista Mutharika also in the forefront with her Callista Mutharika Safe Motherhood Foundation campaigning for safe motherhood and child health some months ago officially inaugurated the blood donation week.
“We need adequate blood in times of emergency in our hospitals to save mothers and children therefore, we are appealing to people to come forward to donate blood to the Malawi Blood Transfusion Service (MBTS) centres in the country,” said Mutharika.
She observed that in Malawi it has been indicated that 807 out every 100, 000 women die due to child birth complications.
“Just imagine in this age we still have women dying of child birth complications. This pains my heart,” she said.
Reproductive Health Unit Officer Wilfred Dzama concurred with Mutharika saying blood loss in women during labour is among one of the major direct causes of death in pregnant women during childbirth in Malawi.
Labour
“Delay in supplies of blood transfusion facilities during labour increase death risks for pregnant women during labour,” he said.
Out of her own experience as a mother, Malawi’s Vice President (VP) Joyce Banda emphasized the importance of stocking adequate safe blood for emergency purposes including for pregnant women during labour in the country.
Banda disclosed that many years ago during labour she lost a lot of blood.
“I was told that I lost a lot of blood and it had to take an intervention of a doctor to save my life,” she said.
MBTS Executive Director Natasha Msamala said despite that blood is the most precious gift of life that anyone can give to another person many people in Malawi are reluctant to go to her organization’s centres to donate blood.
“Donating blood regularly by sufficient number of healthy people is necessary to ensure that blood will always be available whenever it is needed,” she said.
Msamala said in Malawi blood is commonly used for women with complications of pregnancy, such as haemorrhage before, during and after child birth.
Severe anaemia
“Blood also saves lives of children with severe anaemia, often resulting from malaria or malnutrition as well as for accident victims including patients undergoing surgical procedures,” she said.
Msamala therefore, appealed to people aged from 16 to 65 in Malawi to go to MBTS Centres to donate blood. She disclosed that as a country Malawi needs about 80,000 units of blood per year but has just slightly over 35,000 units hence not adequate to meet the demand.
Msamala attributed to Malawians’ reluctance to donate blood due to among other things some misconceptions.
“For instance some people are afraid to donate blood because they believe that doing so will make them grow thin and impotent,” she said adding that others are also discouraged to donate blood out of believing that MBTS sells blood.
Yet MBTS is a non-profit institution purely engaged in collecting blood from volunteers, test it before distributing it to all hospitals in Malawi to save lives of people in need of it.
“People should never believe in the misconceptions that have been circulating because they are not true, instead they should come forward to donate blood,” said Msamala.
To at least stock some blood in its banks, MBTS mainly depends on young people between 16 and 25 years especially from schools and colleges for blood donations therefore, its blood banks store inadequate blood against a high demand when students are on holiday.
Many people in Malawi have yet to understand the importance of donating blood that it saves lives.
However, something encouraging is that some young people between 16 and 25 years in Malawi aware of the importance of donating blood and established their club, ‘Club 25’.
The club members have vowed to donate blood 25 times in their life time to save lives.
Donation
According to MBTS a person can voluntarily donate 450 ml of blood at a time and has to be examined to make sure that he/she is healthy and medically meets standards before making a donation.
“We mainly depend on school and college students to collect blood so much so that when their premises are closed we struggle to source blood for the needy in times of emergency yet if more people come forward to donate blood we can meet the demand,” said Msamala adding that blood demand in the country is always high.
Demand for blood in Malawi according to MBTS statistics even always gets higher between October, November and December and early January annually.
Many people are in need of blood around this period because they become anaemic after contracting malaria due to rampant mosquito bites as it is rainy season.
Further, around the same period road accidents increase due to festivities such as Christmas and New Year.
Msamala said her organization engaged Mutharika in the importance of donating blood during the Blood Donation Week to use her as a human magnate for encouraging more Malawians to understand the importance of donating blood in the country.
MBTS is also engaged in tireless civic education activities aimed at encouraging Malawians to donate blood in the country and annually joins the rest of the world in commemorating ‘World Blood Donor Day’ on June 14.
Malawi, with a population of over 13 million is indeed struggling to have adequate blood in its blood banks in public hospitals.
To highlight blood availability challenges in Malawi, Eugene Kongnyuy from Child and Reproductive Health Group, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom (UK) conducted a research in the country.
“Malawi is one of the countries that have established a national blood transfusion service according to World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations and guidelines,” he said.
Donors
However, Kongnyuy noted that the MBTS is not currently able to provide the total amount of blood required by the health facilities in Malawi. “Therefore, in addition to the blood received from MBTS, some hospitals still continue to collect, test and store blood at the facility level,” he said.
The researcher further explained that for a long time hospitals in Malawi relied on family replacement blood donors whereby the hospitals asked patients’ guardians to look for family members to come forward to donate blood for the sick relative or friend.
“This system was found to be inadequate because time is wasted in the process of looking for donors, getting them to hospitals, testing for their blood groups, testing for infectious agents, and conducting a blood donation session,” said Kongnyuy.
The MBTS was therefore established by Malawi Government in 2003 with a 7.8 million Euros (then about K14.6 billion) funding from European Union (EU) to collect and distribute safe blood and blood products to the country’s hospitals for use in time of emergency to save lives.
“Now that the MBTS is not able to provide adequate supply of safe blood to hospitals, the two systems co-exist side by side,” said Kongnyuy.
To sample Malawi’s blood availability challenges Kongnyuy clarified that data was obtained from MBTS from eight hospitals that provide blood transfusion services in three districts of Lilongwe, Kasungu and Salima in central Malawi.
During the study the population of the three districts was estimated at 2,812,183 and there were 127,000 deliveries per year of which 40 percent took place in the public health facilities (hospitals and centres).
Kongnyuy said it was revealed in the study that a third of the blood used in these districts went to the maternity units and that the MBTS depended on students for blood donation.
“Continuity of blood supply is not ensured especially during examination periods and during holidays when students return to their homes. During these periods the MBTS frequently runs short of blood,” said Kongnyuy.
He disclosed that for example, during the period he conducted the study, the in-charge of Malawi’s major referral hospital [Kamuzu Central Hospital (KCH)] in Lilongwe disclosed that his hospital had been without blood for a week because students were on holidays yet the hospital continued receiving emergency cases in need of blood.
Similarly, Likuni [Catholic Mission] Hospital also in Lilongwe had not received blood from MBTS for two weeks during the same time of data collection for the study according to Kongnyuy.
“Looking at data from hospitals and MBTS, it was clear the number of pints of blood requested by hospitals from MBTS was less than the pints they require,” he said.
No surgeon puts on a green gown, strap a mask round the mouth and nose and effect an operation on a patient on the operation table in the theatre without first making sure there is an adequate amount of this liquid in this special hospital room. Blood gives life as it facilitates the smooth running of human body systems.
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