•The availability of safe blood and blood products is a prerequisite for various health care services.
•These include surgeries, treatments for cancer and other acute and chronic medical conditions, trauma care, organ transplantation, and childbirth
The government is piloting a digital blood accountability system, known as vein-to-vein technology, to secure donated blood.
The system is being piloted in the Nairobi regional blood transfusion service, Kenya National Blood Transfusion Services executive director Nduku Kilonzo said.
This is part of a raft of measures introduced by the Health CS Mutahi Kagwe after reports that donated blood was being sold by cartels to neighbouring countries such as Somalia.
“Right now everybody is focusing on technology which is an accountability system and I want to confirm that we are piloting. Right now in Nairobi our regional blood transfusion service we are actually collecting data directly from people and putting it into the system,” Kilonzo said on Monday.
“Your donation details will be in the system and within a few weeks you will be receiving your results and your notifications not in a paper as we are used to but in a text message in an email that is QR coded with your details, that is, your medical details and that is the point at which we are moving towards,” she added.
The three-tiered structure will have a web-based inventory that accounts for collections and distributions and will be deployed to all regional blood transfusion centres, satellite and blood banks in phase one.
Under phase two, there is a blood inventory management system tracking blood bags and phase three comprising of a vein-to-vein sharing platform that shall have on board all private and public hopsitals.
The availability of safe blood and blood products is a prerequisite for various health care services.
These include surgeries, treatments for cancer and other acute and chronic medical conditions, trauma care, organ transplantation, and childbirth: all lifesaving procedures.
Kenya is struggling with a 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.
Over the last one year, the service has been able to collect the highest number of units at about 297,000 but still falls short of the one million requirements per year.
“Every surgery that happens requires standby blood; every mother that gives birth would require standby blood; some more often than not will use the blood, chemotherapy, dialysis a lot of them require transfusions whether it is blood or blood components,” Nduku said.
The KNBTS on Monday launched a nationwide blood donation drive running for two weeks.
The drive is being conducted in collaboration with counties in 40 collection points, including a five-day drive at the Kenya National Archives in Nairobi as well as universities.
“We need over a million pints a year and we are not even reaching 300,000 and when your loved one dies because there is not enough blood in the blood bank it is because you never took the responsibility to give some blood,” Nairobi Woman Representative Esther Passaris said.
Director of Health Services at the Nairobi Metropolitan Services Ouma Oluga said Nairobi has a huge demand for blood, mainly due because many patients are referred from the counties.
Nairobi records nearly 66,000 deliveries a year, with 28 per cent of them being caesarian deliveries that require blood.
“We are also working very hard to make sure that we increase the availability of blood across all our facilities because Nairobi is one of those places where we were losing a lot of women during deliveries before NMS came into being, but have since reduced that by more than half,”Oluga said.