Authorities of the National Blood Service (NBS) have bemoaned the lack of budgetary support from the government and delay in passing the Blood Service Bill as key factors that have militated against the achievement of targets set for last year.
The service had to rely on Internally Generated Funds (IGFs) to run its activities, a situation that made it difficult to increase the Percentage Voluntary Donation (PVD) of blood and the Blood Collection Index (BCI) for last year.
The acting Director of the NBS, Dr Lucy Asamoah-Akuoko, made those observations at an Annual Performance Review (APR) meeting in Accra yesterday.
The APR, which was on the theme: “Sustained Voluntary Unpaid Blood Donations – Essential Interventions for Safe Reproductive, Maternal, Newborn and Child Health”, brought together health personnel across the country.
“We set very ambitious targets last year because we thought we had improved facilities to do so. However, lack of budgetary support from the government, absence of a legislation to regulate our operations and other factors did not favour us,” she said.
Government support
She underscored the need for a composite national budget by the central government to be made for the NBS to facilitate the delivery of services.
“There is an increase in the cost of consumables which has put a lot of pressure on the IGF. Even some of the personnel the NBS recruited had to leave due to delay in financial clearance,” she said.
Dr Asamoah-Akuoko also cited resource constraint, especially lack of vehicles as a factor that militated against the NBS’s ability to organise outreach programmes for voluntary blood collection to meet the targets set.
The Deputy Minister of Health, Dr Victor Bampoe, who chaired the APR, lauded the efforts made by the NBS and said the theme was relevant to the current health needs of the public.
He urged the NBS and other public agencies to devise innovative ways to increase their IGFs to augment the scarce resources from the central government.
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