Evaluation of the Factors that affect voluntary blood donation in students at Rushoroza Seed School, Kanungu District.

Abstract

Globally, in 2015 World Health Organization theme for blood donor day campaign was “thanks for saving my life”. On June 14th, WHO, strongly encourages more people to donate blood voluntarily and regularly with slogan “Give freely”, give often, blood donation matters world-wide. Uganda with a population of 34 million needs about 250,000 units of blood to be able to meet its national needs but couldn’t get these big units due to many challenges. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate factors affecting Voluntary Blood Donation among students at Rushoroza Seed School, Kanungu District. This study was conducted in Rushoroza Seed School. A cross-sectional descriptive and quantitative study was employed. The results showed that 67% (45) participants had never donated blood voluntarily, 33% (22) ever donated blood voluntarily. Out of 67 participants majority of them donated 35(52.2%) so that they can get biscuits and soda after the donation while 22(32.8)% were encouraged by friend to donate blood, 6(8.95%) heard appeal for blood donation on radio and 4(5.97%) relative/friend needed blood to be transfused. Out of 67 participants’ reasons for not donating blood voluntary 35(52.3%) was due to fear of to be tested for medical illness like HIV, 25(37.3)% fear of needles prick and only 7(10.4%) fear of looking at blood to avoid fainting. The 63% (42) of participants said they think blood donation is necessary, 24% (16) did not think of its importance and 13% (9) said that it was not necessary. Keywords: Blood donation, voluntary, Kanungu district and students.