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Give legal backing to blood service -Dr Ansah

The National Blood Service Ghana (NBSG) was able to achieve only 37 per cent of its voluntary blood donation nationwide, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the service Dr Justina Kordai Ansah has said.

According to her the 50 per cent target of 2018 could not be met because of the absence of an effective legislation that would coordinate the activities of blood services nationwide and called for legal backing for the service.

She indicated that the inadequate number of trained staff to coordinate the activities of the service was seriously hampering it activities and as such could not meet the desired target which could spell disaster for the service.

“There should be recruitment of additional staff and motivation of existing staff to promote retention,” she added.

She said this at the Annual Performance Review 2018 yesterday, in Accra under the theme “Voluntary Unpaid Blood Donation: Requirement for Safe and Adequate Blood Supply.”

 Dr Ansah stated that inadequate vehicles and essential equipment and logistics for the Central and Northern blood centres was also another challenge.

The CEO said the service would continue to strengthen its institutional capacity and governance, as well as establish a nationwide comprehensive quality management system.

Dr Ansah indicated that the increase Blood Collection Index (BCI) per 1000 population stood at 6.5 per cent which she said was a little below the measure.

Delving into their achievements, Dr Ansah said they had commenced partnership with Zipline on a project to distribute essential medicines by drone technology, with support from the Vice President.

She added that the service had held series of workshops on Human Immune Virus (HIV) testing and counselling for blood donors and also trained new staff including nurses, donor recruiters and doctors.

The director stated that there was the need to set up resource mobilisation for expansion of blood service infrastructure nationwide.

She, therefore, called on all partners and stakeholders to commit themselves to ensure that the country achieved 100 per cent voluntary unpaid blood donation to save lives.

BY ABEDUWAA LUCY APPIAH

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