Blood Donor Campaigns in Blood Transfusion Center, KKU : Successful or not?

Abstract

Background : The safest blood donors are regular, voluntary non-remunerated blood donors (VNRD).   At the time of shortage blood supply, replacement blood donations (RBD) were asked from patients' family or friends. RBD were not considered safe because they donated blood under family peer or circumstances pressure and may hide their high risk behavior or illnesses.  According to the WHO policy, every units of blood should be from VNRD.  In this approach, many campaigns have implemented to increase VNRD and repeated donations. The campaigns were started at 2007 up to present.

Objective: To evaluate the increasing rate of blood donation and the rate of VNRD and RBD during the fiscal year 2005 -2013.

Method: The VNRD and RBD information during 2005 -2013 were from indoor donation unit, Blood Transfusion Center, Faculty of Medicine, Khon Kaen University.

Results: Total numbers of indoor blood donations were 12986 in 2005 and 22440 in 2013. The increasing rate of donation was 72.8%. The VNRD in 2005 to 2013 were 8282/12986 (63.8%), 8868/13051(67.9%), 11851/16068 (73.8%), 14317/17361 (82.5%), 16426/18568 (88.5%), 19416/20714 (93.7%), 18203/20559 (88.5%), 18848/21485 (87.7%) and 20532/22440 (91.5%), respectively.  Apparently, the RBD were decreased from 36.2% (in 2005) to 8.5 % (in 2013).

Conclusion: Based on the results, our blood donor campaign project was successful. However, VNRD should be actively encouraged to repeat donation. Therefore, more strategies have to be approached such as educate, motivate and recruit new blood donors and convert eligible RBD to VNRD to achieve the goal of  WHO in the year 2020.