All blood bank services, especially those of developing countries, face a major shortfall of blood donations due to lack of voluntary blood donors. Our study aims to evaluate the acceptability of Short Message Service based interventions towards becoming voluntary blood donors among medical university students of Karachi, Pakistan. Methods. A total of 350 medical students were approached in medical universities of Karachi, Pakistan, using a nonprobability convenient sampling technique. Data collectors administered a self-made questionnaire to each participant using an interview based format. All data was recorded and analyzed on SPSS 16. Results. 350 participants, having a mean age of 21.47 ± 1.36, were included in our study with 30.6% (107/350) being males and 69.4% (243/350) being females. 93.4% (327/350) of participants agreed that donating blood was healthy, but only 26% had donated blood in the past with 79.1% donating voluntarily. 65.7% (230/350) of the participants agreed to take part in Short Message Service based behavioral interventions to become voluntary blood donors with 69.7% (244/350) also agreeing that Short Message Service reminders will promote them to donate blood more often. Conclusion. With university students willing to become voluntary blood donors, Pakistani blood banks can carry out Short Message Service based interventions to encourage them to donate blood. 1. Introduction The continuous major challenge faced by all blood services worldwide is the huge demand-supply gap between blood donors and patients [1]. Although blood donation forms an integral component of medical services, only 92 million blood donations were made to an estimated 234 million major operations performed in 2013 [2]. Developing countries, like Pakistan, experience an even greater crisis, owing to the high incidence of transfusion-requiring medical conditions like high risk obstetrics, thalassemia, trauma, and malaria. In Pakistan, only 28 people donate blood for every population of 10000 [3]. Replacement donors and paying for donations contribute significantly to Pakistani blood banks that in turn promotes high risk collection of seropositive infectious blood as opposed to the low risk blood products obtained from voluntary donors [4]. In 2012, an estimated 70% donations were replacement or paid for donations with 50% cases receiving unscreened blood transfusions [5]. Recruitment of low risk voluntary blood donors is a primary solution of replenishing this shortfall in blood banks [6]. University student populations, medical university students in
References
[1]
H. Safizadeh, N. Pourdamghan, and B. Mohamadi, “University students awareness and attitude towards blood donation in Kerman City,” Iranian Journal of Blood and Cancer, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 107–110, 2009.
[2]
WHO, Towards 100% Voluntary Blood Donation: A Global Framework for Action, WHO, 2013.
[3]
“Pakistan suffering from lack of blood donors: seminar told,” http://www.dawn.com/news/1011774/pakistan-suffering-from-lack-of-blood-donors-seminar-told.
[4]
H. B？nig, M. Schmidt, K. Hourfar, J. Schüttrumpf, and E. Seifried, “Sufficient blood, safe blood: can we have both?” BMC Medicine, vol. 10, article 29, 2012.
[5]
“70% blood donations in Pakistan are either replacement or paid for,” http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-2-114368-70pc-of-blood-donations-in-Pakistan–are-either-replacement-or-paid-for.
[6]
B. N. Sojka and P. Sojka, “The blood-donation experience: perceived physical, psychological and social impact of blood donation on the donor,” Vox Sanguinis, vol. 84, no. 2, pp. 120–128, 2003.
[7]
P. A. Giri and D. B. Phalke, “Knowledge and attitude about blood donation amongst undergraduate students of pravara institute of medical sciences deemed university of central India,” Annals of Tropical Medicine and Public Health, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 569–573, 2012.
[8]
N. Zaller, K. E. Nelson, P. Ness, G. Wen, X. Bai, and H. Shan, “Knowledge, attitude and practice survey regarding blood donation in a Northwestern Chinese city,” Transfusion Medicine, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 277–286, 2005.
[9]
Z. Awan, “Do mobile phones cause tumors?” Journal of Pakistan Medical Students, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 64–67, 2012.
[10]
M. Vervloet, L. van Dijk, J. Santen-Reestman, B. van Vlijmen, M. L. Bouvy, and D. H. de Bakker, “Improving medication adherence in diabetes type 2 patients through real time medication monitoring: a randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effect of monitoring patients' medication use combined with short message service (SMS) reminders,” BMC Health Services Research, vol. 11, article 5, 2011.
[11]
C. Pop-Eleches, H. Thirumurthy, J. P. Habyarimana et al., “Mobile phone technologies improve adherence to antiretroviral treatment in a resource-limited setting: a randomized controlled trial of text message reminders,” AIDS, vol. 25, no. 6, pp. 825–834, 2011.
[12]
G. Eysenbach, “CONSORT-EHEALTH: improving and standardizing evaluation reports of Web-based and mobile health interventions,” Journal of Medical Internet Research, vol. 13, no. 4, article e126, 2011.
U. F. Siddiqui, A. Yasmeen, N. Hina, and S. N. Alam, “Who donates more; medical or non-medical Students?” Journal of the Dow University of Health Sciences, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 17–21, 2012.
[15]
P. London and B. M. Hemphill, “The motivations of blood donors.,” Transfusion, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 559–568, 1965.
[16]
L. Kasraian and M. Maghsudlu, “Blood donors' attitudes towards incentives: influence on motivation to donate,” Blood Transfusion, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 186–190, 2012.
[17]
O. Marantidou, L. Loukopoulou, E. Zervou et al., “Factors that motivate and hinder blood donation in Greece,” Transfusion Medicine, vol. 17, no. 6, pp. 443–450, 2007.
[18]
N. Shenga, R. Pal, and S. Sengupta, “Behavior disparities towards blood donation in Sikkim, India,” Asian Journal of Transfusion Science, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 56–60, 2008.
[19]
M. Alam and B. El Din Masalmeh, “Knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding blood donation among the Saudi population,” Saudi Medical Journal, vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 318–321, 2004.
[20]
K. Sabu, A. Remya, V. S. Binu, and R. Vivek, “Knowledge, attitude and practice on blood donation among health science students in a University campus, South India,” Online Journal of Health and Allied Sciences, vol. 10, no. 2, article 6, 2011.
[21]
“Blood Donation among medical students: Knowledge, Attitude and Practices,” http://www.researchgate.net/publication/224982224_Blood_Donation_among_Medical_Students_Knowledge_Attitude_and_Practices.
[22]
V. Wiwanitkit, “Knowledge about blood donation among a sample of Thai university students,” Vox Sanguinis, vol. 83, no. 2, pp. 97–99, 2002.
[23]
M. Shah, S. Hasan, S. Malik, and C. T. Sreeramareddy, “Perceived stress, sources and severity of stress among medical undergraduates in a Pakistani medical school,” BMC Medical Education, vol. 10, no. 1, article 2, 2010.
[24]
G. M. Hosain, M. Anisuzzaman, and A. Begum, “Knowledge and attitude towards voluntary blood donation among Dhaka University students in Bangladesh,” East African Medical Journal, vol. 74, no. 9, pp. 549–553, 1997.
[25]
A. Agrawal, A. K. Tiwari, A. Ahuja, and R. Kalra, “Knowledge, attitude and practices of people towards voluntary blood donation in Uttarakhand,” Asian Journal of Transfusion Science, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 59–62, 2013.
[26]
S. Uma, R. Arun, and P. Arumugam, “The knowledge, attitude and practice towards blood donation among voluntary blood donors in Chennai, India,” Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research, vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 1043–1046, 2013.
[27]
H. Gombachika and M. Monawe, “Correlation analysis of attitudes towards SMS technology and blood donation behaviour in Malawi,” in Proceedings of the 3rd International ICST Conference (AFRICOMM '11), pp. 239–247, 2011.
[28]
“Donate, receive blood via SMS,” http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-06-13/pune/29652354_1_blood-donors-voluntary-donors-blood-banks.
[29]
M. K. Fung, B. Briggs, and A. Frascoia, “The effects of text message reminder on blood donor show rate,” Transfusion, vol. 49, Abstract SP34, p. 65A, 2009.
