Patients prescribed for blood transfusion in Migori County are staring at imminent death as the region’s blood bank runs out of stock.
Officials from the local blood bank at the County referral hospital say that lives of patients requiring blood transfusion in local health facilities are threatened by the big shortage of blood due to the low blood donation trend by the local population.
At a critical meeting this morning with one partner in blood collection campaigns in the region, the Rotary Club of Suna Migori, an in-charge of the Migori blood satellite Mr. Gideon Ombima painted a sorry situation of a deficit of 5,000 kits of blood to date.
With a population of about 1.2 million people, Migori requires to collect 1,000 blood kits every month, a total of 12,000 kits per year, to address the ever-emerging high demands of blood to save lives of patients in the area.
“Yet from January to date we have only collected 7,000 pints of blood, out of which a big number has already been used, leaving a gap of 5,000 kits to fill the deficit for us to sit well with the emerging blood transfusion cases,” explained Mr. Ombima.
The official who was with a colleague Evans Richa noted that Migori is one of the six blood bank satellites within the Nyanza region that are listed to feed the Kisumu –based bank with at least 500,000 kits of blood every year.
“So far the major undoing to the blood bank stocking is the low number of people volunteering to donate blood even when a serious campaign is conducted within the Nyanza region and, especially within Migori County,” lamented Mr. Ombima.
While appealing for more partners to come on board in supporting blood collection exercises in Migori, the official cited Lwala Medical Centre and the Rotary Club of Suna Migori as great partners have collaborated with that the blood Bank centre at the Migori referral Hospital to save lives.
Mr. Ombima added that other challenges dogging the local blood satellite, citing lack of refrigerated rural health facilities to store blood due to limited dependable electricity, lack of adequate funds to carry out more blood donation exercises and, vehicles and staff to facilitate more blood donation forums.
He however denied claims that the centre has been selling donated blood leading to the huge shortage of the commodity, dismissing the claims as rumors meant to taint the names of the staff.
At the same time, he denied that patients have been transfused with ‘bad’ blood within the region, leading to health complications.
“We are running a digitized system that is able to screen blood properly, track a unit of blood from the donation point to its final destination of transfusion to a patient.
All the rumors doing round about blood theft and safety are just street talks meant divert attention from the real problems by those peddling them,” said Mr. Richa.
By George Agimba
