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Unpaid blood donations rise most in India: WHO

Express news serviceTags : unpaid blood donations, World Health Organization, global data, IndiaPosted: Wed Jun 15 2011, 03:09 hrs
New Delhi:

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While the voluntary unpaid blood donations rose by 10 per cent between 2007 and 2008 in all major countries, India has reported the greatest increase — from 3.6 million to 4.6 million — the new global data released by the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

According to the report, the number of countries collecting all their blood supplies from voluntary unpaid donors increased by more than 50 per cent between 2002 and 2008.

Gender specific details of the data from about 100 countries revealed that 70 per cent of all blood donations are collected from male donors. “Just 25 countries collect more than 40 per cent of their blood supplies from female donors,” the report said.

“WHO’s goal is for all countries to obtain all blood supplies from voluntary unpaid donations by 2020,” Coordinator, Blood Transfusion Safety at WHO, Dr Neelam Dhingra said. “Nine years ago, 39 countries were obtaining all their blood supplies from voluntary unpaid donors: in 2008 that figure had gone up to 62. We hope that World Blood Donor Day will encourage more people in more countries to become regular voluntary blood donors.”

Differences in age group of blood donors was also found depending on their economic status. For example, in richer countries, donors tend to be older (over 44), the WHO report stated. In low and middle income countries, it was seen that the donors were younger (under 25).

“As many as 77 countries provide data on distribution of blood donations by age group. In high income countries, only 27 per cent of donations are from the under-25 age group, while 40 per cent of donations are collected from donors older than 44 years old. In low and middle income countries, almost half (45 per cent) of all donations come from people under 25, and 18 per cent from the over-44 age group,” the report further mentioned.

“One obvious reason why there are more younger donors in low income countries is because the overall population tends to be younger,” Dhingra added. “Strategies to encourage more people to give blood voluntarily need to take factors like this into consideration.” The WHO estimates that blood donation by at least 1 per cent of the population is generally sufficient to meet a country’s basic requirements for safe blood.

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source:indianexpress.com/news/unpaid-blood-donations-rise-most-in-india-who/803715/0