Donate blood to save lives — Capt Snyper
The Head of Department of the Blood Bank at the 37 Military Hospital, Capt. Nana Yaa Snyper, has impressed on the public to cultivate the habit of donating blood to meet the huge deficit at the Blood Transfusion Centre (BTC) of the hospital, and to save lives.
Advertisement
She said the BTC was in critical need of blood to supply to other hospitals to meet emergencies.
“If just one per cent of the population in the country decides to donate blood four times in a year, we should be able to meet the demand. Blood has to be waiting for patients; not the other way round,” she stressed.
Speaking at a blood-donation exercise organised by TV3 in Accra at the weekend, Capt. Snyper said hundreds of pregnant women, accident victims, sickle-cell patients and people with other medical conditions were in dire need of blood to survive.
The other partners were Onua FM and 3 FM.
Scores of people voluntarily donated blood at the well-patronised annual event that was supervised by medical professionals from the 37 Military Hospital, the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital and the Ridge Hospital.
Help save lives
Capt. Snyper said the lack of readily available blood in the health facilities for emergency situations caused delays in meeting the health needs of patients and that more needed to be done to reverse the situation.
“Our target, therefore, is to ensure that we get thousands of units of blood to feed the blood bank. For today, we are looking at not less than 400 units.
“If people go to the hospitals and see how patients battle for survival, with some losing their lives as a result of the lack of blood, they will see the need to voluntarily donate to save lives,” she said.
Other Trending Stories
She encouraged the public to take advantage of the exercise, since voluntary donors were given priority attention in terms of blood transfusion at the hospitals.
Social responsibility
For his part, Mr Steven Bedua, who coordinated the exercise, said the initiative was part of the media station’s social responsibility and it was particularly targeted at contributing to the health needs of the public.
He stressed the need for people to donate blood, pointing out that it could not be purchased elsewhere and reiterated that many lives were lost due to lack of blood in times of need.