Awareness of voluntary blood donation among the general public visiting a rural hospital of Peshawar, KPK

Abstract

Introduction: Millions of lives are saved by blood transfusion. The use of whole blood is a well-accepted and commonly employed measure without which many modern surgical procedures could not be performed. The objective of the study was to know the awareness and frequency of blood donation among the public attending a rural hospital, the reasons for not donating blood and to find the relationship between awareness and voluntary blood donation.

Methods: It was a cross sectional survey conducted in February 2015 in which 175 questionnaires were distributed among consenting public visitors at the rural Nahaqi Emergency Satellite Hospital (NESH) Charsadda, Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, through convenient sampling technique. The data were analyzed in SPSS 15.0.

Results: Out of 175 volunteers (mean age 31 37z10 77 years), 92 were males (mean age 31 37z10 41 years) and 83 were females (mean age 31.37z11.21 years). The total number of donors were 47(32.2%) who were only males. Overall awareness about blood donation was low, but males were more aware as compared to females so there was a positive relation between awareness and blood donation. Majority (84.6%) of people gave the reason for not donating blood as “no one had ever asked them to do so”; 3.4% people did not donate blood due to fear of hospitals and 1.1% of people did not donate blood due to fear of transmission of diseases.

Conclusion: There is a strong need for awareness programs in rural areas for blood donation, to increase the awareness and to clarify the community concepts about blood donation and its practices.