Role of Cbos in Comunity Blood Donor Mobilization

Abstract/ Synopsis….

ROLE OF COMMUNITY BASED ORGANIZATION IN BLOOD DONOR MOBILIZATION

The need for blood especially during emergency maternal care (EMC) and in other medical emergencies such as road traffic accidents cannot be over emphasized. The importance of voluntary blood donation and strategic donor recruitment at all levels is imperative to ensure that these blood needs are met.

Engaging CBOs with a view to develop or improve community healthcare and blood donation behavior is pertinent to the country’s blood safety response and prevention of transfusion transmissible infections (TTIs), maternal .

A community based organization is a public or private nonprofit that is a representative of a community or a significant segment of a community, and is engaged in meeting human, educational, environmental, or public health and safety community needs. Community Based Organizations (sometimes known as local non-governmental organizations) usually operate within a single local community for development.

They are essentially a subset of the wider group of nonprofits. Like other nonprofits they are often run on a voluntary basis and are self and/or partner funded. Within community organizations there are many variations in terms of size and organizational structure. Some are formally incorporated, with a written constitution and a board of directors, also known as a committee, while others are much smaller and are more informal.

The recent evolution of community organizations, especially in developing countries, has strengthened the view that these "bottom-up" organizations are more effective addressing local needs than larger charitable organizations. Typical community organizations fall into the following categories: community-service and action, health, educational, personal growth and improvement, social welfare and self-help for the disadvantaged.

The availability of safe blood during emergencies saves lives. Our experience shows that there are many volunteers out there in the communities that are willing to donate blood during awareness and blood drive campaigns, when they are duly informed and when they are properly mobilized by people they respect and recognize in their communities.

Blood safety and blood donor mobilization is a key thematic area in public health promotion. Safe Blood for Africa Foundation brought on board CBOs to contribute in achieving the blood safety mandate in Nigeria as a pilot study for NBTS to ride on. This will aim at linking the community based structures and volunteers with NBTS centers to facilitate community friendly and community driven blood safety programs in order to gain ground at grass roots levels.

The overall goal for this initiative is realizing 100% voluntary non-remunerated blood donation in Nigeria through community based blood donor mobilization through the help of community based organizations. Activities were implemented in various communities to propagate blood safety and voluntary blood donation messages thereby eliminating myths and misconceptions as well as addressing fears about blood donation.

This paper presented how exercise provided an avenue to accomplish not only the Identification, Assessment and Selection of CBOs, but to open doors for series of advocacy and repeat advocacies to Government and private agencies.

The exercise was designed to make SBFAF and NBTS staff conducts physical visits to line Ministries and Local Government Area (LGA) offices within 20 LGAs in the vicinity of the listed NBTS centers. In addition, other strategic locations such as faith based organizations and health institutions and centers were also visited in order to identify registered CBOs/CSOs with proven visibility and credibility in their communities.

In total, 157 CBOs, FBOs and SCOs were identified, screened and filtered. 90 were recognized as CBOs SBFAF and NBTS can work with, 57 of which were physically visited by the team and assessed using a developed questionnaire. 20 CBOs were finally selected. After implementation, A total of 1,042 units of blood were collected within 6-8 weeks of the CBOs implementation much more than the 800 units(40x20) set as internal target and very close to 1200(60X20) set as external target.

Although the goal and target of the CBO engagement was accomplished, there were a challenges faced during the course of the project. This paper also highlighted some strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the form SWORT analysis to ease communication.