The Brand Ambassador of the National Blood Service and founder of the Kwaaba Foundation, Maame Kwaaba Stephens, organized a blood donation and awareness walk to emphasize the need for people to continue donating blood in commemoration of her birthday.
The highly patronized walk supported by the Kaysens Group and the National Blood Service was held on Saturday, the 5th of March, 2022.
The walk started from Laboma Beach in Accra, through the La Township and then back to Laboma Beach amidst fun activities. This event was supposedly the first-ever blood donation drive exercise at a beach.
The exercise dubbed “March-March Campaign” targeted repeat and potential donors and the general public. It also encouraged people to see blood donation as a positive act. Dignitaries patronized the fun games such as Ludu, Checkers, Snooker game, tug of war, horse riding and many others.
In an interview, the exercise organizer, Maame Kwaaba Stephens, said: “The whole idea is to bring young and vibrant people together to understand the need to donate blood and encourage them to become regular and voluntary blood donors. Awareness of the need for blood is shallow, and many people would have donated if they had known the seriousness of the situation.” Ms Stephens also noted that the impact of donating blood goes beyond that patient who receives it and goes to touch the lives of their families, loved ones, and society at large.
The CEO of the National Blood Service, Dr Justina Ansah, who was present at the event, encouraged Ghanaians to volunteer to donate to stock our hospital blood banks.
As a country, Ghana has never met its blood requirement. In 2021, only 45,000 units of blood were collected from voluntary unpaid donors out of the needed 308,000 units.
Available data show that children and mothers during childbirth die daily due to acute blood loss, and cancer patients, accident victims, and other patients need a blood transfusion to survive. Surgeries, in some cases, have had to be postponed due to lack of blood.
