SA kicking off Blood Donor Day
2004-06-14 11:48
Benita van Eyssen
Johannesburg - South Africa's non-profit National Blood Transfusion Service has been procuring blood for more than 70 years. The southern African nation of 45m people is one of only 39 countries worldwide where 100% of its blood and blood products is supplied by voluntary donors.
Despite high HIV/Aids prevalence - around 5.3 million people are infected - the country's supply of around 900 000 units of blood a year is relatively safe with few cases of infection reported among donors and recipients.
Its experience in procuring blood has become an inspiration for its neighbours and other sections of the developing world still struggling to obtain and provide safe blood for emergency situations and surgical procedures. These are some of the reasons the World Health Organisation has chosen to launch its inaugural World Blood Donor day on June 14 in South Africa, says Dr Robert Crooks, the medical director of the South African National Blood Transfusion Service.
Crookes ascribes the country's successes in a time of HIV/Aids and other blood-borne diseases to a number of factors - among them absolute voluntary blood procurement, a trend worldwide today. "When a person gets paid for blood, they see a financial incentive and might not answer the question's truthfully or honestly," he says. Potential blood donors are quizzed about their lifestyle, sexual health and habits.
Sophisticated blood screening undertaken
Homosexual men are automatically excluded as candidates. Sophisticated blood screening and testing is undertaken. But it is perhaps the country's efforts to lure young donors with the potential to assist with a sustained future blood supply that has made it so appealing a location to launch the WHO-backed exercise, he said.
Teenagers and young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 that are generally ranked at a high risk of becoming infected with HIV/Aids are also the most appealing as potential donors.
In 1999 South Africa started Club 25, taking its cue from an initiative that began as Pledge 25 in neighbouring Zimbabwe in 1989 that set out to encourage - considered "low-risk" at the time - secondary school children and young adults to give blood.
Committing to a safe lifestyle
The initiative is increasingly being seen as a means to fight the spread of HIV/Aids by promoting a healthy lifestyle among regular donors in this age group who supply 24% of donor blood. "The whole philosophy around the club is helping donors commit to a safe lifestyle that will enable them to save another person's life," according to Diane de Coning, the blood procurement director for the SANBS.
Accessing information through SANBS staff at donor clinics, pamphlets and a club newsletter helps to instil among young potential donors a sense of awareness of diseases like HIV/Aids, she believes. Those who joined the programme are also constantly reminded of what risk behaviour entails through the questionnaire they face every time they present themselves at donor clinics.
In the last five years South Africa has doubled its "Club 25" donor base from 16 000 to 35 000, she told Deutsche Presse-Agentur, dpa. "As far as our statistics are concerned, the HIV prevalence among blood donors new blood donors is 0.06%. In the Club 25 membership it its lower than 0.04%," she noted.
In the run-up to World Blood Donor day that would see young local pop stars endorse the blood donor drive, SANBS staff were putting the finishing touches to a Club 25 video that would include tips on how to go about recruitment for those wanting to embark on the programme. De Coning, meanwhile, was in Malawi to help establish a similar programme for the country that began its voluntary donor service at the end of last year.
"They are using a similar programme in the Philippines. At a university in Haiti, the Club 25 concept is also being applied successfully. In Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya it has also been adapted to suit their particular conditions," she said. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA