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The Sunyani Teaching Hospital is experiencing an acute blood shortage, Mr Enoch Gyau, a biomedical scientist and the Unit Head of the hospital’s blood bank has said.
Basically, the shortage he added was due to the upgrade of the hospital, saying that had increased referrals from sister-facilities, especially facilities in rural communities, and appealed to the public to voluntarily donate blood to re-stock the blood bank.
Mr Gyau made the appeal in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani on the side-lines of blood donation exercises the hospital in collaboration with MTN Ghana Foundation organised and held at the Sunyani Senior High and Twene Amanfo Technical and Senior High Schools.
The exercises were in in line with the Foundation’s annual ‘Save a Life blood donation’ exercise held on February 14, every year to support the National Blood Service and restock Regional Blood Banks and offered opportunity for the students to voluntarily donate their blood.
“Blood donating is a life-saving venture, and we must all remember that we don’t know whenever exactly we or our relations may need blood,” Mr Gyau stated, and saying, however, that blood collected expired within 35 days. “That is why we must all sacrifice and donate blood to re-stock the facility and to meet the demands of the growing clients at the facility,” he urged.
Mr Kofi Owusu, the Bono Regional Manager, MTN Ghana according to the World Health Organization (WHO) millions of lives were saved each year through blood transfusions. However, many hospitals and blood banks, especially in Ghana still struggle with shortages of blood, he added, worrying that in Ghana the blood transfusion figure falls short of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended minimum of 10 units per 1,000 populations, which is essential to meet basic transfusion requirements.
So the ‘Save a Life project’ was instituted by MTN Ghana Foundation in 2011 in response to call by the National Blood Services to help restock the blood bank and further help restock the National blood bank and other regional blood banks. The project seeks to encourage voluntary blood donation and had since collected over 29,000 units of blood over the years.
Source: GNA
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