Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Maputo Central Hospital (HCM), the largest hospital unit in the country, has only 160 units of blood available for year-end emergencies, the Director of the Emergency Department announced yesterday, calling for greater participation in the blood donation campaign.
“We currently have 160 units of packed red blood cells and their derivatives,” said Dino Lopes, Director of the HCM Emergency Department.
He explained that the number of available units does not mean the hospital can treat the same number of patients, as some patients may require more than five units of blood during the transfusion process.
“We continue to appeal to the public to keep going to the Blood Bank of Maputo Central Hospital on normal working days (…) and on Sundays. As is customary, we also seek out places with large gatherings, such as churches and other locations where we are invited to carry out blood donations,” the official said.
According to the Director of the Emergency Department, in the last 72 hours alone at least 1,500 people were treated at Mozambique’s largest hospital, with some services coming under pressure.
“All entry points, namely the adult emergency service, paediatric and gynaecology emergency, maternity, forensic medicine and special clinic, were under pressure, but as usual we had our normal work teams as well as reinforcement teams, and in all these emergency services we had reinforcement teams that joined forces and managed to respond effectively to all patients seeking our services,” Dino Lopes concluded.
