Call to donate more blood

A doctoR has called on more people to donate blood as not all the blood collected would be eligible for use on patients.
The Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH) blood transfusion services manager Dr Amos Lano said as soon as blood was collected from a person it went through a rigorous screening process until it was certified as clean and eligible for transfusion.
“The screening process detects some diseases like Hepatitis B, sexually transmitted diseases including the HIV/AIDS,” he said.
“For example if 10 bags of blood were collected, at the end of all the laboratory screening processes only four or five bags will be eligible for transfusion.
“The rest are discarded because of diseases detected.
“At one time a patient would need two or three bags of blood that’s why we advise the relatives (family replacements) to donate at least five bags.
“We need a bigger collection of blood because what comes out is minimal and that’s the real situation,” Dr Lano said.
He said one of the biggest challenges that the transfusion centre identified was that people still needed to understand why they had to donate blood.