By Magnus Aluma The operations of the National Blood Service Commission, NBSC Enugu Center seems to have been hindered by inadequate Funding by the...
By Magnus Aluma
Acting Director of the Center, Mrs Irene Igweze
The operations of the National Blood Service Commission, NBSC Enugu Center seems to have been hindered by inadequate Funding by the Federal Government.
The Acting Director of the Center, Mrs Irene Igweze disclosed this in an interview with Africanewscircle in Enugu. She said that the Commission lacked enough manpower to guarantee more efficient service delivery.
Mrs Igweze called on the Federal Government to equip the Enugu Center of the Commission with adequate manpower, increased budgetary allocation and some operational vehicles, for enhanced productivity in the Center.
“We need the vehicles for us to enter the rural areas for sensitisation and awareness, our services are more in the urban areas and this limits the number of people we reach. In Ebonyi State for instance, we don’t have all the time to go there, because of difficulty of movement”.
She noted that the Enugu Center of the NBSC is currently battling with the challenges of creating awareness, and making people to understand what blood donation entails.
“Many people don’t know what blood donation entails, even if you go to churches, offices, schools and markets, even after all the jungles and road show, people will still not understand what blood donation entails,” she said.
According to her, the attitude of people towards voluntary blood donation also pose some challenges in the operations of the commission, as people believe that their blood would be used for fetish purposes.
“So, one of our challenges is creating that awareness, for people to understand our purpose and know that blood is scarce and when you give it freely to someone you don’t know, you have a reward for it in heaven,” she said.
No fewer than two hundred voluntary blood donors patronize the Enugu Center of the National Blood Service Commission every year, with at least, fifty percent of them expected at the occasion of this year’s World Blood Donor Day Celebration.
