It is always a struggle to get blood from this blood bank. Every time someone needs blood the House officer (A Doctor) would have to spend his last drop of energy to make it available. This was my experience during my Housemanship days. Having it easy purely means a miracle and I didn't have much of that, perhaps 
Why is it so?
Are people being stingy with their blood? Shouldn't they.
The blood bank system is something that has since existed to supply blood for ready transfusions and the for the saving of life.
Many people have been saved and rescued from untimely death from blood loss or the dreaded anaemia due to various forms of illnesses. Only because the blood of their type was available for them at the time. If there was no blood ready for them to be transfused with at that time they would have died. but someone had donated and made that blood ready for them.
This is especially needed for pregnant mothers who deliver and are at risk of postpartum haemorrhage. They would require urgent blood replacement to save them from mortality.
But I must say that the blood bank system especially in Nigeria has not been up to that task of availability and speedy supply of blood to the necessary Court is to save a life.
In this post, I would like to eliminate some specific reasons why this may be so.
Transportation
When blood is needed the time, it takes for that blood to be made available will be an addition to the time from when it was donated to the time it was prepared and grouped and cross-matched and packaged and then forwarded for it to be transported to the patients who requires it?
All the prior process is expected to have been done, getting the blood ready to be sent. But in the case of an emergency, maybe a road traffic accident or a postpartum haemorrhage as we mentioned before, it often takes a long time before blood is made available.
This is because the road network is often jam-packed with a lot of traffic. Vehicular movements are stopped and even an ambulance is delayed from reaching its destination. Many have proposed the use of unmanned drones to supply blood products to sites of emergency needs. this will be the fastest means of delivery of blood products and first aid materials. However, there is a long distance to achieving that.
Donation
Have you ever donated blood?
People will hardly donate blood only less than 20% of the population will donate blood. In the US, 37% are eligible but only 10% do annually
source.
Why is this so?
From a rough perspective of people's ideas, they believe that;
-They need to be healthy for them to donate blood.
-They think they need their blood more.
-They don't believe in blood donation or transfusion.
-They want to donate their blood and get paid for it.
-They have chronic infections which could be transferred to the person they are donating to and so are ineligible.
-They have donated severally which also makes them ineligible to donate.
There are so many other limitations that make people not to be able to donate blood when it is needed so some people cannot even donate blood.
Poor donation system to the blood bank will cause less availability of all the necessary types of blood.
The importance of the blood bank being functional and rapidly responding to the need is quite a huge one.
Many lives can be saved if this can be implemented to help more people to donate and more people receive blood.
For this reason, whenever there is a need for blood in the hospital, a loud outcry is made to everyone who may have the blood type that is required. Because at that time we need fresh whole blood to be able to save a life.
Do you know your blood group?
Knowing this can help you to be able to help others who need your blood group.
There are different classifications of blood but the common one is the ABO GROUPING consisting of A, B, AB and O.
Group A can receive blood from A, AB and O
Group B can receive blood from B, AB and O
AB can receive from A, B, AB and O and hence called the universal recipient.
O can receive from O but can give to everyone if you noticed.
Clinically we also consider the Rhesus factor in choosing who donated to who. The Rhesus is represented by + or - and this means anyone with - can not receive from anyone with +, this is to avoid reactions.
Blood transfusion has been known to be a life-saving trick and has saved lots of people. And improvement in the speed of supply and awareness of people to this act of saving lives is much needed as well.
Referrences
Givingblood.org
Mayo clinic
Thanks for reading.
