`Voluntary, unpaid blood donations is only 20pc`

KARACHI, June 13: Senior physicians and pathologists at a seminar on Monday stressed the need for an increased number of volunteers donating blood regularly without demanding any remuneration in order to make the country self-sufficient in safer blood and blood products.
The seminar was organised by the Aga Khan University Hospital in connection with World Blood Donor Day falling on June 14.
The theme this year is: “more blood more life”.
According to WHO data, around 92 million blood donations are collected annually from all type of blood donors. In 62 countries, national blood supplies are based on almost 100pc voluntary, unpaid blood donations.
In 39 countries, blood donations are still not routinely tested for transfusion-transmissible infection (TTIs), including HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis.
Of the total donations collected in low- and middle-income countries, 45 per cent of them come from donors under 25 years of age. At the AKUH seminar, speaking on the state of blood donations in Pakistan, haematologist Dr Bushra Moiz said that “a meagre one per cent people [10 donations/1,000 population] donates blood and thus Pakistan falls short of the annual demand of 3.2 million units of blood by 40 per cent.”

She said that generally there were three types of donors — family/replacement, voluntary/ non-remunerated and paid/commercial.
In Pakistan, voluntary and non-remunerated donors contributed less than 20 per cent of all blood donations, she said, adding the trend of donations showed that it would remain difficult to achieve the World Health Organisation’s goal of 100 per cent voluntary blood donations by 2020.
She said that the theme of this year’s World Blood Donor Day called the people all over the world to become life savers by donating blood voluntarily regularly.
Another AKUH consultant Dr Usman Shaikh said that approximately three to four per cent of the population in Pakistan suffered from viral hepatitis and other transmittable diseases, which made it all the more important to screen donated blood.
Talking about the ideal way for safe blood donation, the haematologist said that blood donors should be selected after an interview and a mini-examination to ensure their physical fitness, followed by screening of the blood for five transfusion-transmissible diseases — hepatitis B and hepatitis C, HIV, malaria and syphilis.
On this occasion he also mentioned the nucleic acid amplification test (NAT), saying that it was a definite step forward in ensuring the availability of safer blood and blood products.
NAT helps detect very minute amounts of genetic material from deadly viruses such as hepatitis B and hepatitis C and HIV in infected donors who are in the pre-seroconversion phase (when antibodies to the illness have not yet developed nor are symptoms visible), he said.