Lives on the line as Koforidua Blood Bank dries up

Correspondence from Eastern Region

Hundreds of lives are on the line as patients, including women in labour, children and accident victims with bleak hope expect blood from a nearly empty blood bank in Koforidua.

Officials at the Koforidua Regional Hospital Blood Bank have resorted to making distress phone calls to some voluntary donors sometimes late in the night, virtually begging them to urgently come to donate to save patients whose lives are on the verge of death.

Relations of sick persons also had to desperately make calls to friends and loved ones to rush in to donate blood to save the dying souls.

The Eastern Regional Hospital Blood Bank is the central point that all other hospitals across the region rely on for blood.

A visit to the Regional blood bank saw a more desperate situation than can be imagined.

Empty storage freezers were seen at the technical room at the blood bank. Lab technicians sitting almost idle hoping that blood donors would come, be tested before giving the green light for them to donate.

Beds specially laid expectantly for blood donors were all vacant. Only one voluntary donor had come to donate blood as at the time Ghanaweb Regional Correspondent got to the blood bank.

The situation has become dire at the time when all schools, churches and other relevant institutions, which are the main source of blood for the bank, have shutdown as a result of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

In an interview, the Eastern Regional Blood Donor Organiser, Madam Philomena Quayson, said there was less than 20 pints of blood at the bank to serve emergency situations.

She contended, the quantity was very inadequate and could finish within hours.

She disclosed that in a week, the bank expends more than 150 units of blood to the various wards of which more of it goes to the maternity and the children wards.

Madam Quayson expressed fears that lives may be lost if the situation remains same; that is, if blood is not donated within the week.

She appealed to the general public to immediately come to their aid to donate blood to stock the bank.

Maame Akosua, a lady whose father was on admission and needing blood almost lost his life but for the timely intervention of a friend who rushed in to donate a pint of his blood.

"Now my father's situation is stable, he is getting better," she told Ghanaweb.

According to the Head of the Eastern Regional Medical Lab Scientists, Reverend George Mensah Damptey, "it is not true that one will get any complications after donating blood."

He urged Ghanaians to do away with that fear and come in their numbers to donate, since due diligence would be followed before allowing a person to donate his or her blood.