Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Prof. Akin Abayomi has restated the government’s commitment to the provision of clean, safe and steady availability of blood for transfusion in all health facilities as one of the measures against haemorrhage, which is the leading cause of maternal and child mortality.
Abayomi reaffirmed at the 2019 Annual Stakeholders’ Summit of the Lagos State Blood Transfusion Service (LSBTS) that the resolve of the present administration to ensure access to screened, certified, clean and quality blood for citizens, especially pregnant women, whenever required remains unshaken.
Speaking on the theme: “Strategy for Reducing Maternal Mortality: Increasing the Blood Supply”, the Commissioner declared that preventable deaths in women and children, resulting from normal life procreation process caused by haemorrhage, are unacceptable.
“In a place like Lagos where we have two teaching hospitals, 27 general hospitals and over 300 primary healthcare centres, we should not accept these preventable deaths. Lagos State shouldn’t be a place where we should be talking about maternal and child mortality rates and this is why we have declared zero tolerance for preventable deaths in mothers and babies”, he said.
While explaining that blood is important to human existence, Abayomi stated that blood should be viewed as an organ and not necessarily as a liquid, adding that whenever blood is being transfused, what it signifies is an organ transplant to save precious lives.
The Commissioner, however, stressed the need for quality assurance in the donation and transfusion of blood, reiterating that a situation where people are infected with blood-related diseases as result transfusion is unacceptable.
“I have seen a few patients that have been infected with hepatitis through blood transfusion or contaminated needles. Only a few months ago a friend of mine with sickle cell went for injection and she was unfortunately infected with hepatitis B; this kind of trend has to be eliminated”, Abayomi insisted.
While noting that the war being waged on HIV through the Lagos State AIDS control agency is yielding the desired results, the Commissioner stated that the Lagos State government will be declaring war on hepatitis in 2020.
He noted that voluntary blood donors who go out of their way despite busy schedules in a bustling city like Lagos to donate blood in order to save precious lives need to be honoured, maintaining that such a gesture will go a long way to spur other citizens to join in the heroic act of donating blood.
Abayomi revealed that State government is devising modern technology to address blood shortages in health facilities across the State, calling for private sector participation and partnership in the drive to address the gap between blood demand and supply.
“We have embarked on integrated public awareness and sanitisation campaign through the Lagos State Blood Transfusion Service to address socio-cultural beliefs militating against voluntary blood donation and we are going a step further in these campaigns in our bid to educate the populace and recruit more voluntary blood donors” he said.
Speaking earlier, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health, Dr. Olusegun Ogboye said the Lagos State Government, through LSBTS, has been working assiduously to ensure that only safe voluntarily donated blood is available and transfused in the State.
He explained that various strategies geared towards addressing a shortage of blood including public awareness campaign, donor care program, media campaign, outreach services, amongst others, are being implemented to increase the donor pool of voluntarily donated blood.Ogboye noted that the overarching goal of the Lagos State Blood Transfusion Service is to recruit and maintain voluntary blood donors and ensure an adequate supply of safe blood for transfusion in line with World Health Organisation (WHO) goal of non-remunerated blood donation in every country of the world.More photos below.
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