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Africa needs more blood products: WHO official

Xinhua, June 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

More efforts need to be made to guarantee rapid and effective access to secure and sufficient blood products in Africa, an official of the World Health Organization (WHO) said Wednesday in Cotonou.

Dr. Youssouf Gamatie, WHO representative in Benin, deplored that in 2013, only 3.9 million units of blood were collected from donors in the African region, a volume that could only cover 50 percent of the annual blood requirements in this region.

He was speaking during a preparatory forum for a regional meeting to be organized by the WHO in September in Cotonou to discuss how to develop a regional strategy on securing blood products and establishing national regulatory systems for collecting blood and blood products.

"This regional workshop will enable us to analyse the approaches that need to be taken to effectively respond to a number of challenges facing blood transfusion in the region," the WHO official indicated.

He said blood transfusion is a priority area for WHO which has committed to help African countries develop their blood transfusion services.

Currently, he continued, only 24 African countries have blood banks equipped with blood from voluntary donors, yet this is supposed to be the norm in all the 47 Sub-Saharam African countries.

Dr. Gamatie said all blood donors should always be subjected to proper testing of diseases such as HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis before transfusion.

"Unfortunately, in 25 African countries, all the blood donors are not tested for one or all of these infections. The test results are not reliable in a number of countries due to shortage of personnel, lack of testing kits or absence of basic laboratory services," he observed. Endi