Author(s)

David S. Chung¹, Fenjun Shen², Sumin Lee³, Taekwon Kong⁴, Jonathan Ko⁵, Jin Young Choe⁶, Sang Min Lee⁷, George Talama⁸

¹School of Medicine, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA.
²Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
³Department of Human Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA.
⁴Department of Chemistry, Washington University, St. Louis, MO, USA.
⁵School of Arts and Sciences, NYU, Yew York, NY, USA.
⁶Seoul International School, Seongnam, South Korea.
⁷La Canada High School, La Canada, CA, USA.
⁸Kasungu District Hospital, Kasungu, Malawi.

Since the discovery of blood circulation and transfusion, there has been an insatiable demand for voluntary blood donations throughout the world. However, gathering blood donors has never been easy because eligible donors constitute only a fraction of the general population and are often reluctant to donate. This is especially challenging in underprivileged countries of sub-Saharan Africa such as Malawi whose nationally run blood transfusion service struggles to maintain hospital blood banks. As a result, hospitals turn to their local communities for directed donations. A retrospective analysis from January 2014 to June 2016 of directed blood donor data from two hospitals in the Kasungu District of Malawi was conducted. The analysis of 2134 donations was carried out with respect to sex, age, hemoglobin concentration, blood group, and presence of transfusion-transmissible infections. On average, donors were 30 years of age and predominately male. Blood group O+ constituted more than half of all directed blood donations. Ultimately, about one third of donations were unable to be utilized for transfusion.

Blood Type, Blood Donor Data, Malawi

Chung, D. , Shen, F. , Lee, S. , Kong, T. , Ko, J. , Choe, J. , Lee, S. and Talama, G. (2018) A Retrospective Study of Directed Blood Donations in the Kasungu District of Malawi. Open Journal of Blood Diseases, 8, 74-82. doi: 10.4236/ojbd.2018.84008.