She was just 17 when she made her first blood donation. It didn’t go well with her because she lost consciousness, but that did not stop her from being a regular donor.
Forty two years later, Aisha Dafalla who is now the Kenya blood ambassador has donated blood 73 times. For her, she derives so much joy in saving lives.
Dafalla is among Kenyans who showed up at the Kencom bus terminal in an ongoing donation drive organised by the newly formed The Kenya Tissue and Transplant Authority.
“My second time I was called by a friend of mine whose brother had gotten an accident and he was in hospital in ICU, and [I] donated,” she said.
The memories of her friend’s brother and the thoughts that someone somewhere is in need of blood at any given time motivates her to continue donating the precious commodity.
“Don’t wait for a tragedy to happen to go and donate blood. We don’t need to cry when we see our loved one die, we need to donate to see that the blood is able to assist the patient,” she said.
The KTTA has enhanced blood collection activities in the country in an effort to fill the blood need gap that has been witnessed in the country over the years.
The exercise that started on Monday at Kencom has seen at least 500 units collected in the last four days, with another 50 units having been collected on Friday by noon.
According to the Nairobi and Upper Eastern head at KTTA Festus Koech, the country is on track towards closing the blood needs gaps with more than 384,000 units having been collected in the last financial year.
“The situation in our banks are not all that good but we are not badly off because for the last two years we have been achieving our targets up to 80 per cent of our total blood need in the country,” Koech said.
“The blood needs in the country right now stands at 500,000 and the last financial year we managed to collect 384,000 units of blood so we are close to the target and this has been attributed to the change of management and the government support.”
Kenya held the first blood conference in the region dubbed 'DamuKe conference' in June 2022.
During the conference, outgoing Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe launched a blood banking management system called DamuKe, a track and trace system for human derived medical products.
The platform was developed through a collaboration between the ministries of Health and ICT, and securely hosts all Kenyan bio-data in line with the Data Protection Act.
Dubbed 'Damu-KE' (a vein-to-vein system), the system will track every unit of blood from donor to transfused patient and shall be applied in private and public hospitals.
““The platform ensures all the donors are registered, this is where you get your results from and also, phase two of the platform dubbed 'vein two' is able to do a vein to vein track," Ted Mwai from KTTA said.
"[This is ] where we are able to track and trace any single unit of blood that is given in the country that means we are able to know your blood as ABC was given to who."
The availability of safe blood and blood products is a prerequisite for various healthcare services.
The country requires between 500,000 and one million units of blood a year.
These include surgeries, treatments for cancer and other acute and chronic medical conditions, trauma care, organ transplantation and childbirth: all lifesaving procedures.
(edited by Amol Awuor)
