Programme Director,
Deputy Chairman of the Board of the South African National Blood Service,
Chief Executive Officer of the South African Blood Service (SANBS)
Representative of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief – PEPFAR
Ladies and gentlemen
The issue of blood safety in our country is an important component of our fight to defeat the scourge of HIV/AIDS in our communities. When I addressed the House of Assembly last Monday during the debate on the President's State of the Nation Address I highlighted that every sector of our society must participate in the social mobilisation for the fight against HIV/AIDS. I am pleased that organisations such as the blood services in this country have responded to this clarion call by establishing this Training Centre to strengthen capacity for ensuring safe supply of blood and blood products to our patients.
The launch of this Transfusion Medicine Training Centre comes at a time when the issue of quality of our healthcare services, specifically in the public sector, is ever in the minds and on the lips of our people. Blood collection, blood banking and transfusion medicine is an essential part of any modern healthcare system which helps to save millions of lives each year.
The world of blood banking and transfusion medicine is continually changing as new technology evolves to further reduce risks associated with the use of blood and blood products. Education and training is fundamental to every aspect of blood safety as well as successful utilisation of blood and blood products in saving lives of children with life threatening anaemia, trauma victims and women with pregnancy related complications, especially the poor and the disadvantaged. Few healthcare providers receive advance training on transfusion medicine during their formal medical or nursing education. This lack of training sometimes results in avoidable death and complications of the use of blood and blood products.
The Ministry of Health In South Africa is highly grateful to the President of the United States of America’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) for its invaluable contribution towards this initiative to improve the safety of blood supply in South Africa as part our National HIV/AIDS National Strategic Plan.
The critical skills shortage in all the disciplines of blood transfusion in South Africa is being addressed on several levels. We are pleased that this facility will be the basis of a network that is envisaged to offer training not only to South Africa but also to blood services in the Southern African Development Community countries.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), education and training is fundamental to every aspect of blood safety, but evidence from the WHO Global Database on Blood Safety 1998 – 1999 indicates that 72% of countries are unable to meet their identified training needs, even though many of the factors threatening the safety of the global blood supply can be attributed, in part, to inadequate training.
This is due to limited budgets, inadequate facilities and insufficient numbers of experienced trainers to make it impossible to meet the training needs of large numbers of staff who may be scattered over wide geographical areas. Recognising the practical constraints facing countries that wish to expand their training programmes but do not have the resources or facilities to do so by conventional means, the WHO Blood Transfusion Safety Team has included distance learning as a key element in its strategy to support national training initiatives.
Distance learning in medicine is well established and telemedicine for educational purposes has been in use for many years. Distance learning is a decentralised approach to delivering education and training in which much of the teaching-learning process takes place outside of the conventional Training Centre. Although Distance learning is widely used in professional and vocational education throughout the world its use in the field of blood transfusion has so far been limited to developed countries.
The World Health Organisation has included distance learning in its strategy to support training in blood safety because it offers blood transfusion services a cost-effective way of expanding their training activities when resources and facilities are limited. It is not meant to replace other approaches, but to be used in conjunction with existing training programmes. The centre will enable health professionals across the country and the Southern Africa region to share knowledge and expertise in various aspects of blood transfusion. We believe that this sharing of expertise and aiding with training programmes for African countries may well be the most important contribution that South Africa can make to improve the quality of blood banking and transfusion services in Africa.
We are pleased that at the heart of the Transfusion Education and Training programme is collaboration with partners in the national and provincial departments of health, academic institutions, healthcare and biotechnology industries at national and international levels. Through such partnerships the Western Province Blood Transfusion Service (WPBTS) and the South African National Blood Service (SANBS) will be effecting the African Renaissance – the renewal of our continent. Through this development SANBS and WPBTS will develop greater cooperation with our Southern African neighbours as well as the rest of Africa in the field of transfusion medicine education and training as well as continuing professional development for blood safety in the continent.
For the period 2005-2007 the national Department of Health reported an increase from 9% to 13 % in maternal deaths from its 2002-2004 report, due to lack of availability of blood for blood transfusions. We welcome the support of PEPFAR in the initiative of installing fridges for the storage of emergency blood in all remote hospitals that perform caesarean sections and do not have blood banks. We strongly believe that such an initiative will go a long way in reducing the number of pregnant mothers dying from maternal haemorrhage while giving birth, due to lack of blood and blood products.
Although the impact of haemorrhage on maternal mortality is largely outside the realm of blood transfusion and is more closely related to the limited infrastructure in the healthcare, the contribution of this Training Centre is also expected to have a significant impact with distant training of our doctors and nurses on timely identification, appropriate referral of high risk pregnancies and appropriate utilisation of blood and blood products in maternal care.
To ensure that our hospitals have adequate supply of blood and blood products, the country relies on voluntary blood donors. The planning for the eminent FIFA World Cup Football Tournament has to include readiness for emergency blood supply. The priority is the urgent need for the country to increase the pool of low-risk blood donors. In South Africa the donor base does not reflect the demographics of the general population. The blood procurement programme can only be sustainable and viable with a significant increase in the number of Black blood donors. There is a need for the country to intensify its campaigns for a healthy lifestyle and education of our youth about the relationship between social behaviour, sexually transmitted infections including HIV, and how these affect blood safety.
The donor education programme to reinforce the message of abstinence, be faithful, use protective measures such as condoms as well as one sexual partner at a time must reach every corner of our land. Today we call on our people to eat healthy, live healthy and become regular blood donors.
Fellow South Africans, I implore all of us to join hands in ensuring that we support all initiatives in our campaigns to build a healthy nation.
I thank you.
