Following up on my post about organ donation, South Africa has a similar problem with blood donation in South Africa. At the moment the Blood Bank in South Africa only has about 4.5 days worth of blood available. All it takes is one big event and there will be no blood left for the day to day operations (surgeries, women needing blood while giving birth etc.) The South African National Blood Service's aim is to collect 1 million units of blood per year, that is approximately 3000 units per day and at the moment they are not reaching these targets.
As mentioned in my organ donation post, South Africans are quite stingy when it comes to giving, at the moment less than 1% of the populations is registered as a blood donor and are donating blood on a regular basis. It is estimated that around 80% of the population will require blood before the age of 75, the fact that only 1% is donating is quite worrying.
The problem does not only lay with the amount of people donating but also with the donor demographic out of the donors only 40% are black. If you compare that to the percentage of black people in the population: 80,8% of the population of about 56.5 million people (as estimated in the 2017 midyear census) in South Africa are black. If you look at those figures then the percentage of black donors must rise dramatically. With the black populace's donations alone the blood crisis can be solved, the contribution to the donating percentage must be raised from 40% to 80% (equal to the contribution to the population), but unfortunately it is not that easy. Much of the country is still underdeveloped and a large number of people stay in rural areas where medical facilities are understaffed and awareness campaigns never reach.
One of the ways and in my book the easiest ways to solve this will be to implement a payment method for the blood donations, the same method is implemented in America and it seems to be working quite well. The price of a pint of blood when used in a n emergency situation is approximately R2000 ($162), nothing compared to the price of life, one pint of blood potentially help more than one patient. If they were to implement a small price increase and pay the donors a small amount, even as little as R75 to R100 ($7.5) I'm sure more people will donate blood.
South Africa's unemployment rate is at 27.7% which means that poverty and desperate people are everywhere. It is unfortunate that one must take advantage of such an situation but it will be to the benefit of the donor and the recipient. A cashless payment system must be implemented that rewards the donor for repeat donations.
This is my plea to all South Africans, please donate blood to help your fellow man. Find out more at https://sanbs.org.za/.
Sources:
http://www.wpblood.org.za
http://www.medirite.co.za/index.php/facts-and-figures-on-our-blood-service/
http://moneypantry.com/donating-plasma-for-money/
http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P0302/P03022017.pdf