By Felix Kuyinu
Lagos State Commissioner for Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, has decried the low rate of blood donors, urging residents to embrace voluntary blood donation to shore up the blood bank in the state’s hospitals.
Abayomi reckoned that Lagos has about 130,000 blood donors which according to him falls below the required numbers looking at the rate of the need for blood transfusion.
Speaking on Tuesday as a representative of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu at the 20th anniversary of the Lagos State Blood Transfusion Committee, the Commisioner said, “There is something important I want to call our attention to, the voluntary donor rate is still on the low side, which means certain patients will be without access to blood.
“Looking at the demographic of Lagos, the blood-donating group is young adults, and we only have seen 130,000 donors, which is not enough. I appeal to Lagosians, Nigerians to donate blood; blood is therapeutic, and we cannot afford to be short of blood in our hospitals.
“If you are young and have no health problem, please find out how you can donate blood for us to meet up with the yearly target to make components of blood safe and available for the continuity of people.”
Abayomi explained during the program titled ‘Pioneering the path, shaping the future in blood services’ that the state’s Ministry of Health has been expanding access to adequate blood transfusion with the use of modern technology in order to make it free of any infection.
He encouraged health practitioners to key into quality service of blood transfusion as it is significant in today’s health service system.
