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Title:
Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of Medical and Pharmacy Students Toward blood Donation at University of Namibia, Hage Geingob campus, Windhoek, Namibia
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Abstract:
BACKGROUNG: Blood is vital in saving lives of many patients who become anaemic due to different reasons such as blood loss due to road traffic accidents, postpartum haemorrhage (PPH), ante partum haemorrhage (APH), surgery and through illnesses like malaria and malignancies. Blood required for transfusion is obtained from blood donors and young adults especially those in higher institutions of learning like secondary schools and universities are increasingly becoming the source of this blood possibly because of the ease to mobilise them. Sometimes challenges are encountered and some potential blood donors actually abstain from this important lifesaving exercise. This study aimed at determining the knowledge, attitude, and practices of medical and pharmacy students at the University of Namibia, Hage Geingob campus toward blood donation.
MATERIALS & METHODS: A cross sectional descriptive study was used to acquire information and deduced conclusion about the knowledge, attitude, and the practice of medical and pharmacy students of the university of Namibia, Hage Geingob campus towardblood donation. We used a Chi-square test to test the association between blood donation, gender and course of study.
RESULTS: 180 students - 59 males (32.8%) and 121 females (67.2%) - met the criteria and participated in this study. Overall knowledge among participants was 65.1%.89.4% considered blood donation to be very important. Out of 180 participants only 79 (43.9 %) had previously donated blood, and for 66 (83.5 %) of them, the major reason for donating blood was to save lives. There was no significant association between gender and blood donation as p>0.05, however there was a significant association between course of study and blood donation, more donors were pharmacy students, p< 0.05.
CONCLUSION: This study showed that individuals meeting the criteria for donating blood do not partake in this exercise basically because either they are not well informed about this humanitarian need or have misconceptions about the exercise.
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