Taraba NMA Chair Decries Poor Funding of Blood Transfusion Service

Dr Edet Nkanta, Chairman, Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), Taraba chapter,has decried the poor funding of the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) centre in the state. Nkanta, who was at an event to mark the 2021 world Blood Donor day in Jalingo, on Monday, told newsmen that there was need for voluntary blood donation, as the state government was not doing enough to fund the centre, for optimal performance.

He said that poor funding had led to depreciation of infrastructure, equipment and service production in the state, and that the state government needed to reposition the centre for the benefit of residents. “When the National Blood Transfusion Service was established, the 17 centres across the country were funded by the Federal Government. But as time went by, the centres were handed over to the state governments.

“Here in Taraba, we have a lot of issues, the state government is not taking adequate care of this place. “It is a worrisome development because, if the state government cannot fund the blood donation centre that is expected to save lives of thousands of her citizens, then what exactly are we doing?“ Assuming we have an emergency now that we require hundreds of units of blood to deal with, what do we do?“ It is a fact that the blood transfusion centre is the only centre that carry out full screening of blood. What we do in the hospitals, is only anti-body test, so, if this centre is not functioning well, then we are missing a lot,” he said.

Dr Yohanna Samaila, Acting State Coordinator, NBTS, Taraba Centre, confirmed to newsmen that the centre was indeed facing funding challenges. He, however, blamed the situation on the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on every sector of the world economy, while calling on the people to voluntarily donate blood to save the lives of those mostly in need. “We are discouraging the sale of blood, we want people to voluntarily donate blood, especially those who are doing well in the society.

“Those who donate for money are poor people who are hungry and cannot even feed well, so their blood is not as rich as those of highly placed individuals in the society. “At the moment, funding is our major challenge and the COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated our challenges significantly, but we are hoping that the situation will improve at the end,” he said.