| dc.description.abstract | There has been reported shortage of blood in most hospitals’ blood bank in Ibadan. Voluntary
blood donation (VBD) is the foundation for safe and sufficient blood supply in healthcare
facilities. Healthcare workers can be valuable resources in making blood available to patients
since they know when, how, where to donate blood. However, adequate supply of safe blood can
only be assured through regular donations by voluntary unpaid blood donors. The purpose of this
study is therefore to investigate the knowledge, perception, practice and barriers to VBD among
secondary healthcare workers in Ibadan metropolis.
The study is a descriptive cross-sectional design. A four stage sampling technique which
involved random selection health facilities, proportionate selection of healthcare workers to be
interview from each local government, proportionate selection of cadre of health care workers
from each facility picked and random selection of consenting 422 healthcare workers from the
facilities. A validated self-administered semi-structured questionnaire developed from relevant
literatures was used to elicit information on respondents’ social demographic characteristics,
knowledge relating to VBD, perception towards VBD, practices and barriers to VBD.
Knowledge was assessed on a 37- point scale and score ≤ 16 was categorized as poor while
scores > 16 were categorized as good. Perception was assessed on a 17- point scale and score ≤ 8
was categorized as negative perception while > 9 was categorized as positive perception. Data
analyses were done using descriptive statistics and chi-square at 0.05 level of significance.
Age of respondents was 36.5±8.5 years and 66.6% were married. Majority (67.1%) were
females. Majority of the respondents (73.2%) had poor knowledge relating to voluntary blood
donation. Most (95.0%) knew the correct definition of VBD and majority (92.2%) also knew the
suitable age for blood donation (BD). Only 22.0% and 19.2% knew how many times a healthy
male and female can donate blood in a year respectively. About half of the respondents (50.5%)
reported that nobody had ever approached them to donate blood and (27.5%) reported that BD
leads to shortage of blood. Most (94.3%) knew that one who is hypertensive cannot donate
blood while 88.2% and 89.3% knew that menstruating women and breast feeding mothers cannot
donate blood respectively. About 51.9% of the respondents had positive perception and the mean
perception score was 10.3±1.9. Few (33.6%) reported that they have donated blood before. Only
(18.2%) reported that they have donated blood in the hospital; while 3.8% donated blood in the
last 10 years ago. Very few (7.3%) reported that fear of pre-screening result prevented them from
donating blood. There was a significant relationship between knowledge of VBD and age of
respondents as well as between level of education and perception towards BD.
The knowledge of blood donation as well as voluntary blood donation among respondents was
poor. Therefore there need for the government, non-governmental organizations and the
collaborating agencies to intensify actions in creating more public awareness of VBD. | en_US |
