Knowledge And Attitude Regarding Blood Donation in Rural Puducherry, India
Keywords:
Blood donation, Knowledge, Attitude, Blood donorAbstract
Background: Blood and blood components save lives in various conditions. In India there is a need of about 8 million units of blood per year and only one-third of this is obtained from voluntary donors. Assessment of awareness and attitude regarding blood donation will help in designing effective health education strategy to improve blood donation.
Objectives: To assess the knowledge and attitude regarding blood donation among individuals aged 18-60 years in rural Puducherry.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey using a structured and pre-tested questionnaire in the rural service area of Puducherry.
Results: Out of 288 respondents, 229 subjects (79.5%) were aware that blood could be donated, and only 14.8% of them knew about the correct frequency of blood donation. Around 80% of these subjects felt that the victims of road traffic accident required blood transfusion. Among those who were aware that blood could be donated, 40 subjects (17.5%) had donated blood in past. Most of them had donated blood for their relatives (55%). Among non-donors the most common reason for not donating blood was “never considered” (34.2%). However, three fourth of the non-donors have shown their willingness to donate blood in future. Electronic and print media were found to be the most common source of knowledge.
Conclusion: Though the awareness regarding blood donation was high, the practice of voluntary blood donation was remarkably low. Education and motivation through various media is recommended to eliminate misbelieves and to reinforce positive attitudes towards blood donation.
References
Sharma R, Madan N, venkatesh S, Ichhpujani RL, Lal S. Factors Influencing Blood Donations and the Ra-tional Use of Blood. J Commun. Dis 2010;42:185-90.
Zago A, Silveira M.F, Dumith C.S. Blood donation prevalence and associated factors in Pelotas, Southern Brazil. Rev Saudi Publica 2010;44:112-20.
Mitra K, Mandal P.K, Nandy S, Roy R, Joardar G.K, Mishra R. A study on awareness and perceptions re-garding blood safety and blood donation among Health care providers in a Teaching Hospital of Cal-cutta. Ind J of Comm Med 2001;26:21-6.
National AIDS Control Organization: Services for Prevention/ Access to Safe blood. Available at: http://naco.gov.in/NACO/National_AIDS_Control_Program/Services_for_Prevention/Access_to_Safe_blood/Accessed march 8th 2014.
Dubey A, Sonker A, Chaurasia R, Chaudhary R. Knowledge, attitude & beliefs of people in North In-dia regarding blood donation. Blood Transfus 2012;20:1-7.
Gutiérrez MG, de Tejada ES, Cruz JR. A study of sociocultural factors related to voluntary blood dona-tion in the Americas. Rev Panam Salud Publica 2003;13:85-90.
Glynn SA, Kleinman SH, Schreiber GB, Zuck T, Combs SM, Bethel J et al. Motivations to donate blood: demographic comparisons. Transfusion 2002;42: 216-25.
Wiwanitkit V. A study on attitude towards blood donation among people in a rural district, Thailand. Southeast Asian J Trop Med Public Health 2000;31:609-11.
Singh B, Pandey RM, D’Souza N, Anushyanthan A, Krishna V, Gupta V, et al. Knowledge, Attitude and Socio-Demographic Factors Differentiating Blood Do-nors From Non-Donors in an Urban Slum of Delhi. Indian J Community Med 2002; 27:118-23.
Voluntary Blood Donation Programme-An Opera-tional Guideline. National AIDS Control Organiza-tion, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Govern-ment of India, New Delhi. 2007.
Salaudeen AG, Odeh E. Knowledge and behavior towards voluntary blood donation among students of a tertiary institution in Nigeria. Niger J Clin Pract 2011;14:303-7.
Shenga N, Pal R, Sengupta S. Behavior disparities towards blood donation in Sikkim, India. Asian J Transfus Sci 2008;2:56-60.
Boulware LE, Ratner LE, Ness PM. Cooper LA, Cam-pell-Lee S, La Veist TA et al. The contribution of soci-odemographic, medical, attitudinal factors to blood donation among the general public. Transfusion 2002;42:669-78.
Glynn SA, Williams AE, Nass CC, Bethel J, Kessler D, Scott EP et al. Attitude towards blood donation in-centives in the United States: implications for donor recruitment. Transfusion 2003;43:7-16.
Olaiya MA, Alakija W, Ajala A, Olatunji RO. Knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and motivations to-wards blood donation among blood donors in Lagos, Nigeria transfus Med 2004;14:13-7.
Uma S, Arun R, Arumugam P. The Knowledge, Atti-tude and Practice Towards Blood Donation Among Voluntary Blood Donors in Chennai. J Clin Diagn Res 2013;7:1043-6
Mwaba K, Keikelame MJ. Blood donation behavior and belief among a sample of high school students in Mmabatho. Curationis 1995;18:2-3.
Mullah F, Kumar D, Antani D, Gupta M. Study of Knowledge, Perceptions and Practices Related to Blood Donation Among the Healthcare Support Staff of a Tertiary Care Hospital in Gujarat, India. J Health Allied Scs 2013;12:2.
Ndroulaki Z, Merkouris A, Tsouras C, Androulakis M. Knowledge and Attitude Towards Voluntary Blood Donation Among A Sample of Students In TEI Of Crete, Greece. Nurs Web J. 2005;23.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The authors retain the copyright of their article, with first publication rights granted to Medsci Publications.
