The Eastern Regional blood organizer of the National Blood Service Philomena Quayson has revealed that people who donate blood regularly develop a lower risk of getting cancers.
According to her, by donating blood, the iron stores in the body are maintained at a healthy level which helps reduces the chances of the donor from all forms of cancers.
Philomena Quayson added that blood donation is also beneficial in reducing the risk of heart, liver, and Kidney ailments and stimulates the production of new blood cells which in turn helps maintain good health for the blood giver.
The Regional Blood organizer said this when an Accountant -Cecil Asiamah organized ten voluntary blood donors on his birthday to stock the blood bank of the Eastern Regional hospital which consistently runs out of stock since the covid-19 pandemic threatening lives of accident victims and women in child labor.
The acute blood shortage according to Philomena Quayson, was aggravated by the closure of schools during the scourge of the pandemic.
“It has become a national issue. We get most of our blood collections from the schools, and now because of the covid, then the double track you go to the school today and cannot meet our target or able voluntary donor’s .so it leads to a shortage at the hospital in the sense that, you come and there is nothing on the shelves. And our voluntary walk-in donors are few in the system so we are encouraging the general public that from the age of 17 years to 50 years if you are not a Sickler, you don’t have any ailment then you can take it upon yourself to walk to any government hospital that has a blood bank and donate voluntarily to save a life.” She said.
The convener of the voluntary blood donation exercise, Cecil Asiamah, stated that he was touched by news reports on the shortage of blood nationwide occasioned largely by the covid-19 pandemic and unavailability of regular donors-students.
“Hearing the shortage, and the fact that blood is not manufactured, and today being my birthday, I decided to call a few friends and co-workers at PIWC -Koforidua and St. Mary’s Day School respectively to come and help donate blood so we came to do the donation to help others who are in dire need of blood. We know that you can have all the money in the world but if the blood is not available, money cannot buy it .so today we don’t have the money but decided to give what we have in abundance we also give to help others. We had nine (9) pints of blood“.
Cecil Asiamah encouraged the citizenry to regularly donate blood to save patients in need of blood transfusion to survive.
Ghana has failed to achieve the 100 percent voluntary blood donation status as required by the World Health Organization (WHO) albeit increasing demand for blood transfusion.
Statistics from the WHO indicate that only 62 countries globally have almost achieved 100 percent of their national blood supplies from voluntary unpaid blood donations, with thirty-four others including Ghana still dependent on family replacement blood donors.
The government of Ghana’s delay in passing the National Blood Service Bill, which seeks to provide the requisite legal framework to accelerate progress towards 100 percent voluntary blood donation, is compounding the situation in the country.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Obed Ansah
