Barriers that prevent health science students from donating blood in an African setting

Abstract

Background: Developing countries face significant challenges in collecting sufficient blood to meet the demands from patients. A healthy, active and willing big population of students can be potential pool for blood donors to meet the safe blood requirements for a country. The aim of this study was conducted to find barriers to blood donation in health science students in the University of Namibia. Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study carried out at Faculty of Health Sciences University of Namibia (UNAM), Windhoek where students were recruited for the study. A pre-tested questionnaire was handed out to faculty of health sciences students chosen by systematic random sampling and data was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences version 21 (IBM Corporation, USA). Results: Out of the 311 students who were recruited in this study nursing students were the majority (166), followed by medicine (72), radiology (38) and pharmacy (32). Seventy two percent of the students (224) had never donated blood while only 28% donated blood on a regular basis. Variety of reasons advanced by students as to why they were not likely to donate blood were fear of needles 21.5%; % lack of information about blood donation 14.8%; underweight 13.2%; were not interested 10% and 8.7% gave medical reasons. The study showed that blood donation is associated with gender, field of study and age. Conclusions: Increasing awareness of the importance of blood donation is the most important strategy to increase the number of blood donors. Health programs need to target behavior change using diverse approaches including the use of current blood donors and student leaders as change agents.