Se­nior lec­tur­er in Haema­tol­ogy at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Dr Ken­neth Charles says on­ly three per cent of the pop­u­la­tion needs to do­nate blood to meet the sup­ply need­ed for the en­tire coun­try.

That means out of a pop­u­la­tion of 1.38 mil­lion peo­ple, on­ly 41,233 peo­ple need to do­nate. How­ev­er, he said the coun­try needs 40,000 units an­nu­al­ly but on­ly 20,000 units are do­nat­ed.

Charles said the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) rec­om­mend­ed that the coun­try should ac­tu­al­ly be col­lect­ing one unit for every 20 peo­ple every year, which would amount to 65,000 units. But that goal has not yet been met.

Speak­ing to the Sun­day Guardian about the cur­rent blood do­na­tion woes, Charles said when a donor can give blood three times per year they on­ly need­ed three per cent of the pop­u­la­tion to come for­ward. He said there would be enough blood of all types col­lect­ed for any cit­i­zen in so­ci­ety who need­ed blood if they got the donor num­bers they need­ed.

But the big dif­fer­ence is get­ting peo­ple to do­nate their blood as vol­un­tary non-re­mu­ner­at­ed blood donors (VN­RBDs)—peo­ple who give their blood with­out re­quest­ing mon­ey.

Vol­un­tary non-re­mu­ner­at­ed blood donors (VN­RBDs) are per­sons who gave their blood freely with­out pres­sure and with­out re­ceiv­ing pay­ment in cash or kind. Pay­ment in kind in­cludes med­ical ser­vices or the right to re­claim one’s do­na­tion. VN­RBDs more like­ly to do­nate reg­u­lar­ly and are there­fore re­peat­ed­ly test­ed for in­fec­tions. They do­nate to a na­tion­al blood sup­ply rather than a spe­cif­ic per­son so their do­na­tions are safe and freely avail­able to any so­ci­ety mem­ber in need.

A Sun­day Guardian probe has re­vealed that peo­ple charge $500 up­wards for a pint of blood in T&T.

Charles, a for­mer di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Blood Trans­fu­sion Ser­vice, said coun­tries such as the USA, Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom didn’t have this prob­lem, un­like the sit­u­a­tion in T&T where about one per cent of the pop­u­la­tion do­nat­ed their blood for spe­cif­ic peo­ple or rel­a­tives and this was not avail­able for the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion.

He said the Min­istry of Health’s an­nounce­ment that it was go­ing to change the cur­rent blood chit sys­tem was a wel­come move. Charles, who is al­so chair­man of the UWI Blood Donor Foun­da­tion, said us­ing the ar­cha­ic blood chit sys­tem where peo­ple do­nat­ed blood on­ly when their rel­a­tives or fam­i­ly mem­bers need­ed it re­sult­ed in there nev­er re­al­ly be­ing an avail­able stock for gen­er­al use in hos­pi­tals be­cause the blood was re­tained for first-pri­or­i­ty emer­gen­cies.

He said when­ev­er blood was do­nat­ed, it took 48 hours to be­come avail­able for use, hence the need to have an avail­able blood pool of all types for any emer­gency sit­u­a­tion or rou­tine pro­ce­dures. Charles said this in­cludes trans­fus­ing pa­tients, Tha­lassemia blood dis­or­der pa­tients, re­nal fail­ure haemophil­i­acs, un­ex­pect­ed bleed­ing and gun­shot wounds.

Charles said many chron­ic and every­day sce­nar­ios could cause peo­ple to need blood. He said it could hap­pen to any­one, so there must be an avail­able blood sup­ply on hand to take care of emer­gen­cies and day-to-day hos­pi­tal pro­ce­dures.

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