KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE REGARDING BLOOD DONATION AMONG HEALTH PERSONNEL IN SELECTED BLOOD TRANSFUSION SERVICES

Voluntary blood donors are the cornerstone of a safe and adequate supply of blood and blood products. For a safe blood transfusion service in our country, where comprehensive laboratory tests are neither possible nor pragmatic, it is best to switch over to 100% voluntary donations, as it is now established that only voluntary non-remunerated regular donation is the safest. Recruitment of safe donors is a challenging task. No blood bank, hospital or Government can sustain health care without adequate blood from such donors and Blood Donor Organisations plays a very crucial role in this endeavour. The present study is about knowledge, attitude and practices regarding blood donation among health personnel in a selected blood transfusion services of Kurnool and Hyderabad. A cross-sectional study was conducted among 100 health personnel from the selected blood transfusion services through a structured questionnaire. In the sample size of 100, overall knowledge of health personnel regarding blood donation is 80% and 19% with average knowledge. The reasons for blood donation, 57% of them believed that blood donation is to serve humanity, 26% believes that because of family replacement and remaining 9% and 8% believed that due to voluntary and good for own health. It was also found that the reasons of non-donation by non-donors, 45% believed that as the blood donors are unfit to donate due to weakness and 41% believed that because of fear of needle. In this study, while evaluating each and every blood transfusion service, it was found that the percentage of voluntary non-remunerated donors who are safest donors is of less percentage while compared to that of family replacement donors whose percentage is high in each and every blood bank except the Chiranjeevi blood bank. It is concluded that, Voluntary non-remunerated donors who give their blood regularly are the safest in comparison to those who give their blood when a member of family or community requires it (family or family replacement donors).