DOH volunteers to be deployed for blood donation

To encourage Filipinos to donate blood, the Department of Health ( DOH) will soon deploy trained health workers to collect blood in the community.

Health Secretary Paulyn Ubial said DOH would have a system to send the trained personnel to barangays and do on- the- spot blood extraction from volunteers.

“We want to have a dedicated staff whose job is to collect blood. Before, they were doing many other things because they are part of the hospitals. We now want them to focus on the blood center,” Ubial said.

She noted that blood collection was usually done in health care facilities, thus requiring the donors to travel from their communities just to donate blood.

The DOH, she assured the public, also have the necessary implements to make the project work. These include transport boxes, cold chain equipment and mobile units, aside from the blood collection and storage facilities.

“Our goal is to engage one percent ( of the population) in blood donation. As of November, we were collecting 910,000 units. We need one million units to reach our target of one percent,” Ubial said.

Aside from this, the DOH has been upgrading its 42 blood centers nationwide to guarantee a safe and adequate supply of blood and blood products for transfusion.

The agency earmarked some P1 billion from its 2017 budget for the project.

According to the World Health Organization ( WHO), blood and blood products could save patients with life- threatening conditions, aside from supporting complex medical and surgical procedures.

The WHO website shows that severe bleeding during pregnancy, delivery or after childbirth is the single biggest cause of maternal death.