Remunerating donors to ensure a safe and available blood supply

The effect of motivational strategy on voluntary plasma donation, a field trial

BACKGROUND

Plasma protein therapies (PPTs) are a group of medicines extracted from human plasma through fractionation. The manufacture of adequate amounts of PPTs requires a large volume of human plasma. WHO emphasized that whole blood and blood component donations should be voluntary and non-remunerated. So, motivating people to donate plasma is crucial. In this study, we evaluated the impact of social media on motivating blood donors to donate plasma without any compensation and the moderating effects of blood donation history on plasma donation.

METHODS AND MATERIALS

we allocated blood donors (n = 501) to intervention and control groups randomly. Participants in the intervention group got educational and motivational messages through a WhatsApp channel. Then, we followed up all participants for six months and registered the information of the plasma donation during this period.

RESULT

In the intervention group, 6.8% had returned to donate plasma, while this was 2% in the control group (p = 0.016, OR:3.59, 95%CI:1.3-9.89). Among regular blood donors in the intervention group, 17.86% had returned to donate plasma but, no regular donor returned to donate plasma in the control group (p = 0.055). In addition, 10.8% of donors who had academic education in the intervention group returned to donate plasma, although this was 2.54% in the control group (P = 0.0485).

CONCLUSION

Our findings suggest that the educational interventions have more effects on academically educated donors to motivate them to donate plasma.

Expanding the platelet inventory to mitigate the impact of severe shortages

The platelet collection and distribution system, based on volunteer nonremunerated donors, apheresis platelet collections, and primarily 1-directional distribution of platelets for up to 5-day room temperature storage at hospitals, typically performs well and provides therapeutic support for hundreds of thousands of patients annually. However, direct and indirect effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, particularly during the Omicron wave, produced dramatic systemic failures and severe shortages. We propose 4 initiatives to reinforce the existing platelet pipeline and buffer the platelet supply against future unexpected disruptions.