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BACKGROUND: The primary responsibility of a blood transfusion service is to provide a safe, sufficient and timely supply of blood and blood products. In fulfilling this responsibility, the blood transfusion services should ensure that the act of blood donation is safe and causes no harm to the donor. Also, necessary steps must be taken to ensure that the products derived from donated blood are efficacious for the recipient, with minimal risk of any infection that could be transmitted through transfusion.
GENERAL AIM: To determine the non-infectious causes of blood donor deferrals at the Volta Regional Hospital, Ho.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study quantified the non-infectious causes of donor deferrals at the Ho Teaching Hospital (formerly Volta Regional Hospital). In all, 1,566 clinical forms of blood donors between January, 2017 and December, 2017 were used. Data was fed into Microsoft Excel to generate a database. The cleaning and analysis of the data was done using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 22). Categorical variables were summarized as percentages and continuous variables were summarized as mean ±SD. Chi-square analysis was used to compare the prevalence of deferral among male and female blood donors.
RESULTS: Out of the 1,566 archived forms of people who had come to donate blood from January 2017 to December 2017, a total of 507 (32.4%) were deferred. 11.8% were deferred due to infectious reasons while 447 representing 88.2% were deferred based on the various non-infectious reasons. The highest prevalence of deferral due to non-infectious reasons was due to low haemoglobin level representing 40.7% of the total number.
CONCLUSION: From the study, non-infectious causes of deferral of blood donors is significant and most are temporary hence the deferred donors need to be educated and followed-up after the deferral period is over.
