- Currently, there are four apheresis machines located in Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret and Kisumu with an estimated six found in the private sector.
- The country needs at least one million pints of blood every year, leaving a huge gap that needs urgent intervention
Image: DOUGLAS OKIDDY
The government is in the process of acquiring an additional four apheresis machines to boost surgery and treatment outcomes in the country.
These are machines that receive donated blood and separate it into its various components such as plasma, platelets, white blood cells and red blood cells.
Depending on the reason for apheresis, one of these components is isolated and collected by the instrument, while the others are returned to the body.
Currently, there are four apheresis machines located in Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret and Kisumu with an estimated six found in the private sector.
The Kenya National Blood Transfusion Service head Nduku Kilonzo said the move is aimed at ensuring that blood is not used full hence reaching more people.
KNBTS has been mandated with collecting, testing, processing and distributing blood and blood products to all transfusing hospitals in Kenya.
“Usually when you talk about cancers, burns treatment, and haemophilia, you need different components and it is more efficient if you give somebody the component they need,” Kilonzo said.
“For instance if you are haemophilic, cryoprecipitate is something that comes out of plasma that helps with being able to clot."
"If you have anemia you need packed cells instead of giving you whole blood. The plan is what is efficient in medicine is to give you what exactly you need.”
To create cryoprecipitate, fresh frozen plasma thawed to 1 to 6 °C is then centrifuged and the precipitate is collected.
Fresh platelets are really good for surgery and it is estimated that in the private sector in Kenya today, fresh platelets donation costs between Sh30,000 to Sh40,000.
Kenya has been struggling with blood shortage. The country requires between 500,000 to one million units of blood a year, yet collects less than a quarter of that volume.
The Covid-19 pandemic worsened the shortage crisis as people shunned going to hospitals, coupled with closure of colleges and schools.
Currently, Kenya has at least 30 satellite centres spread across the 47 counties with six Regional Blood Transfusion Centres in Nairobi, Embu, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kisumu and Mombasa.
According to KNBTS, the ministry has over the last two years distributed centrifuges in 16 counties for component preparation.
“Right now we do not anticipate a stock out in reagents if blood were to be collected today enmasse and we have already done the forecast and saying this is an election year, we need to have a sense of emergency preparedness,” she said.
“Being able to deliver safe blood includes the commodities, the processing, the reagents, the transportation and storage and the distribution systems that will make sure that the blood reaches and is safe to the patient at transfusion level.”
The country needs at least one million pints of blood every year, leaving a huge gap that needs urgent intervention.
Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe at a past function encouraged counties without blood establishments to set up with assistance from the KNBTS.
Reports of blood donated in the country being sold to neighbouring Somalia further complicates the situation, with Kenyans losing trust in the process.
“Blood is now readily available in our regional blood banks and facilities in need of blood can do a requisition. The ministry has embarked on strengthening accountability mechanisms through a phased approach,” Kagwe said.
The poor donation culture worsened by the effects of the pandemic made an already bad situation works.
The ministry has come up with a ‘vein to vein’ system of securing blood in the country.
The 3-tiered structure will have a web based inventory that accounts for collections and distributions in phase one.
It is already being deployed to all regional blood transfusion centres, satellite and blood banks.