“We Want to Make Zambians More Comfortable With Blood And Blood Donation”

What does your organisation do?

"We collect blood by visiting our donors and test the blood they donated. At the same time we also want to engage new donors in giving blood and keep the donors we already have. Especially the latter is hard to do. We did not have a database, so did not know who our audience was, except they are between the age of 16 and 30."

How are you using ICT within your organisation?

"A computer based Blood Donor Tracking System is put in place and our staff is trained in how to use computers and how to operate the system. With the system, we can more easily trace our donors, people can register once and we can keep their history and results. We can also more easily generate demographic data. We also are starting to use social network sites such as Facebook."

How do you intend to use these social network sites?

"We want to better inform people about blood and blood donation. Especially in rural areas blood is often associated with witchcraft. So if a boy of sixteen years old returns to his mother and says: ‘I’ve given blood’ it is often met with fear or misunderstanding. With the social network sites we want to reduce this fear by explaining that blood can be used as a treatment."

What is the accomplishment your organisation is most proud of?

"The fact that all of the documentation of the nine different regional blood donation centres is now standardised. The IT-skills of our staff have gone up and they all use the same document to ask questions to blood donors. The questions in the document make it easier to separate donors that are not suitable to donate. Before, our blood was often infected so 15 percent of donated blood was thrown away. With the new document, only 8-10 percent has to be discarded. As testing a unit of blood costs 45 US Dollars excluding labour costs, this saves a considerable amount of money and time."

What are the future plans of the Zambian Blood Transfusion Services?

"Apart from creating a database and a Facebook page, we also will start using an SMS system. Through this system we can alert donors when they can donate blood again. This means that we can make better use of the donors we already have."