16 Jun 2014

The Minister of Health, Dr John Seakgosing has said his ministry is committed to providing necessary resources to ensure that blood given to patients is safe.

Speaking at the World Blood Donor day in Francistown, Dr Seakgosing noted that over the past 10 years, the HIV prevalence in donated blood decreased from 7.7 per cent in 2003 to one per cent last year.

He said the decrease was a clear indication of an efficient blood transfusion process and the National Blood Transfusion Services (NBTS) continued to review and improve on its testing strategies.

“Such testing strategies are the implementation of the Individual Donor Nucleic Acid Testing that is used for the screening of HIV-1, Hepatitis B and C virus in donated blood,” he said.

He explained that the screening was able to detect low levels of viral genetic material present in the body, long before it begins producing antibodies in response to the virus, thus giving ability to detect the disease at an earlier stage.

Dr Seakgosing noted that with the efforts of improving the safety, availability and accessibility of blood and its products, the collection increased by 72 per cent while the discard rate decreased from 11.8 per cent to 3.5 per cent over the past 10 years.

He however said despite the impressive results, the blood collection remained below the national requirement and there was need to intensify strategies to raise awareness on the need for safe blood and its products.

“The NBTS is required to collect 40 000 blood units per year, however the two centres based in Gaborone and Francistown have not reached the target for the past five years and the ministry has decentralised blood collection to Ngami, Kweneng East, Mahalapye and Serowe,” he said.

The Minister explained that from August to April this year, 2 038 units of blood were collected in the districts.

On the theme for the day, which was Safe Blood for Saving Mothers”, Dr Seakgosing noted that although every mother should expect childbirth to be joyful, it was unfortunate that many women in the Sub-Saharan Africa died from pregnancy related causes.

He said global statistics indicated that 500 00 women died each year from pregnancy related causes, with one third of the deaths happening in Africa.

“The risk of dying at each pregnancy in developing countries is 1:140 while in Scandinavia it is 1:25 000,” he said.

Furthermore, Dr Seakgosing cited that Botswana’s maternal mortality ration stood at a rate of 190:100 000 live births.

He implored everyone to join multitudes of voluntary non remunerated blood donors in saving lives in order to give every mother the opportunity to live with her newborn baby.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative, Dr Felicitas Zawaira said every day 800 women died from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications and almost half of the deaths occurred in developing countries.

Dr Zawaira noted that the risk of maternal mortality was highest for adolescent girls less than 15 years of age.

She said the choice of this year’s theme is particularly important in Africa, where one out of 38 women die from pregnancy-related complications compared to one out of 3 700 in other parts of the world.

The WHO representative explained that many patients, especially women and children died because of lack of blood or were infected when transfused with unsafe blood.

She however said significant progress has been made during the past decade in improving the availability and safety of blood in the African region.

At the same event, donors were given awards and one of the donors, Mr Tshupafalo Sedimo suggested that donors should be considered for Presidential awards as way of appreciating what they contribute to the country and to encourage those who have not, to consider donating. ENDS