Africa-Press – Botswana. Batswana have been urged to donate blood regularly to help save lives and curb shortage of supply at blood bank.
This was said by the blood donation recruiter, Ms Tumelo Ramolebang during a blood donation drive campaign by We Love U Foundation recently at in Gaborone.
She said since conception of the Blood Transfusion Services in 2000 Botswana had never met the target set by World Health Organization (WHO) for countries to collect two per cent of blood for its population to have sufficient blood supply thus pleaded Batswana to donate blood.
“We need to collect 45 000 units of blood per year for us to reach the target and last year we collected an amount of 24 619 units of blood and so far this year from January till date we have collected 3 657 units,” said Ms Ramolebang.
She said a single donation constitutes 450 ml of blood which could save three lives, and since people donate by incidence or once off it meant that there was high demand of blood and yet very low supply.
“Females should donate after every four months while males should donate after three months, therefore I encourage Batswana to eat and or live healthy lives which could help them to qualify for blood donation,” she said.
Representative from We Love U Foundation, Mr Tuhafeni Ntinda said their non-profit entity was into initiatives such as blood drive donations and clean-up campaigns to name a few.
“The mandate of today’s campaign is to get at least 40 people to donate blood and to create awareness on the importance of giving the gift of life to those who need it,” he said.
He encouraged the public to donate in huge numbers especially after COVID-19 had contributed to a significant drop in blood supply thus many countries faced low blood drive donations.
A blood donor Ms Erica Gaseitsewe cautioned the public to give blood as that could even save their own lives in future. “I was moved by the fact that my friend had premature childbirth and she needed a blood transfusion which required us to even seek out a donor through social media and I told myself that I will be an active donor so as to save, lives” said Gaseitsewe.
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