COVID-19: National Blood Service appeals for blood donations to save patients

The Service is, therefore, appealing to the general public to donate more blood to help save COVID-19 patients who are in critical conditions.

PRO of the Service, Steve Addai Baah, said they can no longer organise mass blood donations as a result of the recent spike in COVID-19 cases.

He explained that the Service is currently relying on relatives of the patients to donate blood for emergency cases.

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“We mostly rely on our voluntary donors or a number of blood collection points but with this second surge, I must say that we are debating a worse case situation because the President spoke yesterday and from all indications those restrictions are back, and so we cannot organise mass blood donations again,” Mr. Baah said.

“So, what we are relying on now is mostly the family replacement donation system whereby we ask people to bring relatives to come and donate for them. And so if we do not have people coming to donate voluntarily, it means that most people will surely not receive blood when there’s an emergency.

“And if you are not also able to bring people to donate for you, it means that we may be recording more deaths at our various hospitals. It also means that we cannot supply the quantity of the units of blood that we are supposed to supply to our hospitals.”

Ghana’s Coronavirus situation seemed to be improving towards the end of 2020 but there’s been a spike in cases in recent weeks.

Currently, the country has recorded 5,358 active cases while 416 persons have died in the process, according to data from the Ghana Health Service.

Mr. Baah noted that the COVID-19 cannot be contracted through blood donation and, therefore, urged the general public to volunteer to donate their blood to save lives.

“What we are telling the general public is that, it is always better for blood to be waiting for the patient and not patients waiting for the blood during an emergency. The assurance is that you cannot contract COVID-19 through blood donation,” he added.