Although health authorities have not established factors behind the spike in the demand, they are confident that the current efforts will help replenish the blood bank.
Authorities have mounted campaigns for blood donation to shore up the bank following reports of high demand for for essential blood groups — O negative and O positive.
The scarcity of O negative — the only blood group that can be donated to people of all blood — has forced the government to mount campaigns for donation across the country.
Although health authorities have not established factors behind the spike in the demand, they are confident that the current efforts will help replenish the blood bank.
“We observed a sharp increase in hospital demand for blood types O negative and O positive from all transfusion centers, this pushed us to launch blood donation campaign in order to increase stock,” said Dr Thomas Muyombo, the division manager at the National Centre for Blood Transfusion (NCBT).
He said although the centre has an annual blood collection plan that follows a certain routine, there was a need to increase blood donations as a precautionary measure.
“We plan ahead to prevent any likely crisis, this time we anticipated demand to even grow further in the coming months basing on what we have seen in the past months,” he added.
At the height of the coronavirus induced restrictions and lockdowns the country faced a threat of not having enough blood stocks as the restrictions hampered movement and blood collection plans. Strategic blood collection centres like schools and churches remained closed for long periods due to lockdowns, leading to a drop in the bank.
The Rwanda Biomedical Centre made a public appeal to authorities to relax the measures in place such that blood collection activities can continue. At one point the country had only 3,000 blood pints, which was equivalent to between 12 and 10 days' stock according to experts.
On average, the blood centre on a daily basis distributes between 250 and 300 blood pints to all hospitals and blood needs for the country is estimated between 90,000 and 100,000 pints annually. Every year, up to 45000 patients need blood transfusion.
The patients include accident victims, people suffering from diseases like malaria, and mothers during delivery of babies