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Aqaba youth building information bank for blood donors

By Fares Al Abed - Apr 25,2017 - Last updated at Apr 25,2017

Medics test blood of donors at Aqaba University College on Tuesday as part of a campaign to build a database of blood donors in the district (Photo courtesy of Aqaba Youth Centre)

AMMAN — The Aqaba Youth Centre has launched a campaign titled "Your blood is my blood", setting up an information bank for blood donors, who can be contacted by hospitals when needed.

Medical facilities in the port city will have access to donors’ names, national ID numbers and blood type, organisers said, adding that the absence of a blood bank in Aqaba prompted them to change the traditional way of blood donation campaigns. 

Amer Bnayyan, the president of the youth centre, said donors can enter their information electronically, and after that “we collect the data and save it in soft and hard copies, then send it to the public, private and military hospitals in Aqaba to contact any donor they want when needed".

"Almost two years ago, a friend called and asked for 40 units of blood for his wife, we tried to provide them but we could not. So, we used [WhatsApp] mobile application to contact everyone we knew, and our message reached Hayat FM, a radio station in Jordan, and thankfully, in two to three days, we managed to provide some 160 units of blood," Bnayyan said.

The youth leader said that on Tuesday, members of the centre visited Aqaba University College and measured blood pressure and tested diabetes and blood type as they started to attract potential donors to join the effort.

Aqaba Health Directorate Director Ibrahim Maayah said that the reason for the lack of blood banks in Aqaba is that there is no government-run hospital in the seaside town of 188,160 inhabitants (according to 2014 census). Health Ministry-affiliated blood banks are usually connected to public hospitals. 

"About seven years ago, the health directorate under an agreement with Prince Hashem Bin Al Hussein Military Hospital [previously Princess Haya], used to grant a six-month medical insurance for regular donors, but probably because of the high expenses and the lack of resources, this service has stopped," Maayah told The Jordan Times over the phone.

One senior official rejected as baseless the claim that blood donations are less facilitated in Aqaba, 330km south of Amman, than other parts of the Kingdom. 

Head of the Blood Banks Directorate at the Health Ministry Adnan Khatatneh insisted in a phone interview with The Jordan Times that blood donors can give out blood without a hassle through the hospitals in Aqaba.

“Donors have access to blood donation facilities in every part of the Kingdom,” he said.

Organisers of blood campaigns agree. Regardless of the lack of a separate blood bank, campaigns are on the drawing board. 

Director of the Aqaba Youth Department Mohammad Nawafleh said that in cooperation with the Health Ministry and the hospitals in Aqaba, there will be a campaign in July that will build on the youth centre's efforts, titled "Your blood is precious, use it to save others".

 

"The campaign is aimed mainly to organise the information we receive from donors directly and through the database, so if we have a hundred donors, for example, we should be able to contact the one with the needed blood group easily and in no time," Nawafleh said.

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