Abstract: Over a million blood units are collected from every donor every year, nevertheless, many more millions still need to be collected to meet the global demand of blood. A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out for a period of one year aimed to assess the public knowledge, attitude, motivational factors and barriers for donating blood voluntarily in an administrative division of eastern Sri Lanka. After obtaining informed written consent, data were collected through a pilot tested, Interviewer Administered Questionnaire, frequencies, percentages and associations were assessed. A total of 405 respondents were interviewed, of which 194 (47.9%) were male and 211 (52.1%) were female. The majority (51.36%) of the respondents had adequate knowledge regarding blood donation and majority of the respondents (92.3%) answered positively as blood donation is a healthy habit. Only 33.6 % of the individuals had previous experience on voluntary blood donations. There were significant associations with the socio-demographic characteristics of gender, age, education, occupation and blood group with a p-value of less than 0.05. Nearly half of the participants (49%) had inadequate knowledge on blood donations and motivational factors such as altruism, peer pressure, media awareness had influence among more than half of them. This study revealed fear of seeing blood or feeling faint and needle pain as the barriers for voluntary blood donations among more than 55% of the participants. Attitudes related to blood donations were not significantly associated with socio-demographic characteristics but they may have contributed to the barriers of donating blood. This study identified factors influencing knowledge, attitude and motivation towards voluntary blood donations and they can be eliminated from the society through conducting series of well-planned awareness programmes.
Keywords: Motivational factors, Voluntary blood donations, Humanity.
Title: Barriers for Donating Blood Voluntarily among People aged between 18-55 Years Living in Eastern Sri Lanka
Author: Kajenthini K, Madhuwanthi L.D.M, Chandrika J.P.M, Jayarathna A.P.G.S.M, Shanmukanathan S, Sujendran S
International Journal of Healthcare Sciences
ISSN 2348-5728 (Online)
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