Voluntary non-remunerated blood donations to ensure blood safety in the WHO South-East Asia Region to support universal health coverage
Overview
Access to safe blood and blood products is recognized as one of the key requirements for delivery of modern health care in the journey towards health for all. The foundation of safe and sustainable blood supplies depends on the collection of blood from voluntary non-remunerated and low-risk donors. Data from the WHO Global Database for Blood Safety (GDBS) brings out several inadequacies related to the supply and safety of blood and blood products. These inadequacies include a number of variations in safe blood practices across the world, including the quantity of blood donated (voluntary and replacement types), quality and adequate testing of the donated blood (immunohaematology [IH] and transfusion-transmitted infections [TTIs]), rational use of blood and blood components such as appropriate patient blood management protocols. These variations are very high in countries of the South-East Asian Region and most of them are either low- or middle-income countries (LMICs).
To address these issues, WHO drafted the “Action framework to advance universal access to safe, effective and quality-assured blood products (2020–2023)”. An important challenge, common to all these countries, is their reliance primarily on replacement blood donation due to the lack of a structured voluntary blood donation programme. Hence, creation of a structured voluntary blood donation programme is the need of the hour, as has been previously stated in the “Expert consensus statement on achieving self-sufficiency in safe blood and blood products, based on voluntary non-remunerated blood donation (VNRBD)” made in Geneva by the WHO Expert Group on self-sufficiency in safe blood and blood products based on VNRBD, 2012 to strengthen voluntary blood donation and fulfil its objective of 100% blood supply through voluntary non-remunerated blood donors.
The information for this document was collected through published peer-reviewed journals, regional meeting reports, and with the help of a questionnaire completed by experts from Member States. The information collected was analysed and compiled in this report. The compiled information becomes the foundation for analysis and synthesis of key gaps, challenges and the way forward to improve blood safety in the South-East Asia Region.
The evidence clearly suggests that to realize the vision of access to safe blood products from a 100% VNRD system for universal health coverage (UHC), the Region needs high political commitment and multisectoral efforts to battle these major systemic challenges.
