Challenges Facing National Blood Transfusion Services in Retaining Voluntary Blood Donors in Mbeya City Council.

Nyakunga, Latifa (2023) Challenges Facing National Blood Transfusion Services in Retaining Voluntary Blood Donors in Mbeya City Council. Masters thesis, The Open University of Tanzania.

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Abstract

The challenges facing retention of blood donors still not well addressed. Therefore, this study assessed challenges facing national blood transfusion services in retaining voluntary blood donors in Mbeya City. To find out how many regular blood donors are present in Mbeya City; specifically, the study examined the attitudes of people towards blood donation, the challenges facing NBTS in retaining regular blood donors and identified ways of overcoming challenges in order to increase retention of voluntary blood donors. A descriptive cross-sectional study involving 114 respondents was carried out using questionnaires and interviews. The data were collected and analyzed while the qualitative data were transcribed and coded depending on the objectives of the study. The majority of participants aged 36-45 years and most were male about 51% were involved in the study. The categories of respondents were community members 51% and about 50% had less than Tsh. 500,000/= monthly incomes. From the randomly selected sample of 114 respondents, 62(54.4%) respondents replied that they had donated blood at least once in their life. The study results revealed that blood collection in Mbeya relies heavily on family replacement and voluntary donation while voluntary donation leads by more 77% of all collections. This study revealed that some people donate blood only if a family member is in need, others are paid to donate and others just give blood voluntarily regardless of the relationship they have with the patient. The reasons for blood donation about 48.0% was due saving the lives of those in need regardless of the relationship. The study concludes that, Mbeya City still has few regular blood donors which makes an alarm on the availability of sufficient blood in the blood bank. Keywords: Retention of blood, blood donors, blood transfusion, Mbeya City

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