The National Blood Service – Ghana, is advocating for the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), to take up the cost of blood processing fees at hospitals.
Currently, the service requires persons who visit the hospital for blood transfusion, to pay a subsidized amount as processing fees. For this reason, Acting Director of the Service, Dr. Lucy Asamaoh-Akuoku, says people feel reluctant to donate blood to the blood bank.
[contextly_sidebar id=”gHicfP9bEiV0IU1jkruYiCgVwoEzG08j”]In an interview with Citi News, at the 2015 annual performance review, Dr. Asamaoh-Akuoku said “when a donor walks to the blood centre or when we move somewhere to collect blood from donors, there are no charges to that; government pays salaries and we try to find ways of getting fuel and equipment to go.”
“When the blood is collected into a blood bank, testing has to be done on the blood; we call it a processing fee. This means, when you are given blood, whether you are a donor or a non-donor, there is a processing fee that has to be paid.”
In 2015, the service targeted 50% of all blood donated from voluntary and paid donors but received about 34%. Out of every one thousand population, the blood service sets out to collect 6.1 unit of blood but received 5.8 units. According to Dr. Asamaoh-Akuoku, the statistics can improve if such charges are scrapped.
“There is no budget from government so we need to buy blood bags; we need to buy equipment to test for all infections such as HIV, Syphilis, Hepatitis B and C so we need to charge. This is a subsidized charge on the service we provide and it has brought a lot of misunderstanding so there is the general perception that blood is sold.”
Even though there has been an increase in voluntary blood donors according to the 2015 performance review, the National Blood Service – Ghana, hopes to increase the percentage of donated blood as well as its collection index.
“We would wish that health insurance would cover the processing fees and also get funding from other sources. That will make our job much easier” Dr Asamaoh-Akuoku concluded.
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By: Farida Shaibu/citifmonline.com/Ghana