Blood transfusion saves lives and improves health, but many patients requiring transfusion do not have timely access to safe blood.
The African Region faces a high demand for blood transfusion due to bleeding related to pregnancy and childbirth, high prevalence of malaria with the attendant complication of severe malarial anemia, high rates of road traffic accidents and other types of injury as well as other indications for blood transfusion.
Ensuring universal access of all the population to a safe blood supply faces several challenges in the region. These include a high burden of disease transmissible through blood transfusion, including HIV, HBV, HCV and syphilis; posing difficulties in selecting donors at reduced risk of infection, unstable economies, lack of suitable infrastructure to provide blood services, inadequate human resources as well as lack of conducive career development structures for BTS staff in many member states. Reliance on family replacement donations, limited coverage and quality of testing, inappropriate blood transfusion and poorly developed quality systems pose additional challenges.
There is a constant need for regular blood donation because it can only be stored for a limited time before use. A sufficient number of regular Volunteer Non-Remunerated Blood Donors (VNRBD) and the ability to process whole blood into components are needed to ensure that safe blood will be available whenever and wherever it is needed.
All blood donations need to be screened for HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis prior to use. Irregular supply of test kits is one of the most reported barrier to comprehensive screening.