“The Q3 release aligns with our efforts to reallocate resources from old priorities to key growth drivers. Our focus remains on promoting technical efficiency and ensuring service delivery at the lowest cost,” said Ggoobi.
Michael Mukundane, the Coordinator for the National Blood Bank said despite increased awareness and change in blood collection strategy from mainly targeting schools, they continue to face sporadic shortages and can’t fully hit their annual targets.
Samuel Davis Wante, the Blood Collection Clinical Team lead at the Nakasero Blood Bank said the stocks they had stored to take them through this period when students, who are Uganda’s main donors are still away from schools in their holidays quickly got depleted as demand for blood starting increasing in late November.
Dr. Rachel Beyagira, a Technical Officer on Hepatitis told journalists on Thursday that they are considering starting testing and treating people who are found positive for the disease with data from blood banks showing increasing trends.
In the coming days, the Uganda Blood Transfusion Services (UBTS) will be collecting blood from the likes of Barumba in preparation for a study by the Makerere University Lung Institute where they will be extracting convalescent plasma from the blood of recovered patients to potentially use it in treatment of those that are testing positive.
According to UBTS Executive Director Dr Dorothy Kyeyune Byabazaire, this conservative move is being considered after accusations of health workers selling blood to desperate patients in addition to hoarding to cause artificial shortages.
Dr Joyce Balagadde, a Childhood Cancer Expert at the Institute said, they have had to disregard the recommended transfusion standards for leukaemia that require patients with a blood count of 20 platelets to be transfused and now wait for the count to go to the lows of 10 platelets before transfusion is done.
Dr. Venice Omona, the Head of Paediatric Department at Lacor Hospital told URN in an interview that his department is the most affected by the blood shortage in the Hospital, something that has led to the deaths of other children.
