Blood service works to keep donations malaria-free
If you visit a high-risk area, wait for four weeks before you give blood.
THE South African National Blood Service (SANBS) recognises Malaria Week in November and commits to safeguarding the blood supply from the disease.
If a person is infected with malaria it can be passed on to another through blood transfusions and infected needles.
In 2013, over half a million adults and children died from malaria globally and today 1.2 billion people live in high-risk areas. These are generally tropical regions with heavy rainfall, humidity and high temperatures where mosquitoes that spread the disease thrive.
The situation is less devastating in South Africa where 10% of the population live in high-risk areas such as Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal and the spread of malaria is seasonal.
“Malaria infections do not manifest immediately after exposure in all patients, and symptoms in a donor may occur only after a donation has been made. Therefore the challenge that malaria poses for the blood service is that donors living in low-risk areas and visiting an endemic, high-risk area must wait for four weeks after their return to a low-risk area to give blood,” said SANBS chief marketing officer Thapelo Mokoena.
SANBS runs extensive laboratory procedures as part of an integrated screening process to test each collected unit of blood for infections common in South Africa such as HIV, hepatitis B and C and syphilis. To avoid malaria-infected blood passing through the system SANBS conducts comprehensive interviews to obtain information from donors and to encourage them to stay malaria-free.
Through daily blood drives and donation centres run in eight provinces, the service aims to collect 3,000 units of blood. Mokoena said the need for life-saving blood transfusions in South Africa leaves no room for compromise in the precautionary measures that SANBS implements to make sufficient quantities of safe blood available.
People who have queries or concerns about donating blood are encouraged to visit one of the donation centres, call the toll-free helpline 0800-11-9031 or engage via social media.
