Tackling Uganda’s Blood Shortage
I remember when the bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon; I was five miles away from the finish line and in disbelief that someone would inflict so much pain at this joyous event. When I reflect on that day, I remember the resiliency of the city — even after running an exhausting 26.2 miles, participants rallied to donate blood at local hospitals. I went, too, assuming that the demand for blood would be exceptionally high and that every donation was essential. By the end of the day, the Red Cross tweeted out: “Thanks to the generosity of volunteer blood donors there is currently enough blood on the shelves to meet demand.”
Five years later, I’m living in Kampala, Uganda where I am working as a Global Health Corps (GHC) fellow. My role is Marketing and Communications Associate at LifeNet International (LN), an organization that improves the quality of care at primary health facilities in four countries. Among other goals, LN is striving to make childbirth safer for mothers and babies in sub-Saharan Africa.
In Uganda, one in 227 women dies during childbirth — a statistic that is now being exacerbated by an extreme shortage of blood across the country. On a daily basis, the Uganda Blood Transfusion Service (UBTS) needs 1,200 units of blood to meet the country’s demand; they currently have 10% of that. People are being denied treatment or are dying because of the lack of available blood transfusions.
My fellow GHC fellows and I couldn’t sit idly by as this problem persisted. Instead, we leveraged our backgrounds and our large network to tackle the problem head on. We didn’t want to just provide a short-term solution, so decided to addressed the root causes of why more people weren’t showing up to donate.
After speaking with UBTS’s coordinator for blood donor recruitment, we identified three key issues: 1) 90% of the donations come from university students, so shortages occur when these students leave on holidays, 2) many people are afraid of needles, and 3) the population is uninformed about the importance of blood donation.
“We estimated that we would be able to recruit around 50 people to donate, and we were shocked to have 190 people donate blood — blood that will be used to save the lives of patients all across the country, including the mothers LifeNet works to protect every single day.”
As a cohort, we created flyers that we distributed among our networks, secured a location, and designed Facebook ads that targeted people across the city. We got to work informing the public about blood donations and quelling their fear of needles. All of our efforts culminated in a blood drive. We estimated that we would be able to recruit around 50 people to donate, and we were shocked to have 190 people show up to donate blood — blood that will be used to save the lives of patients all across the country, including the mothers LifeNet works to protect every single day.
Days after the drive, I read a story about a hospital in Gulu that was faced with an impossible decision. In their ICU, they had one mother with a retained placenta, another who was severely bleeding after giving birth to twins, a third who needed an emergency caesarian section, and only two units of blood in their storage fridge. Doctors with the knowledge of how to save these women, but lacking the blood required to execute the procedures, stood by helplessly.
If Boston, a city of fewer than 700,000 people, can meet the demand of the blood banks in one day, then patients in a country of 41.5 million should not be dying because they cannot receive a transfusion. I’m incredibly proud of our outreach campaign, but this is just the beginning as we continue to push for health equity.
Nicole Giusti is a 2017–2018 Global Health Corps fellow at LifeNet International in Uganda.
