PESHAWAR: As the Blood Donor Day is being observed today (Sunday), health experts have called for the promotion of voluntary donation, improvement of regulation, strengthening of blood screening and protection of patients who depend on blood for survival.
Despite slight upswing in the blood collection by the regionalblood centres, experts advocate reforms in blood transfusion services to promote voluntary donation and move away from replacement and paid donation for a sustained culture of regular donation.
Manager of the Regional Blood Centre Peshawar Dr Adnan Riyat told Dawn that the RBC had collected 1,475 units of bloods from 82 medical camps as of May 31 this year, compared with 4,125 in the entire 2025.
‘We are working with colleges, universities and communities for better blood collection,’ he said.
Presently three RBCs, including Peshawar, Swat and Abbottabad are functionalwhile Mardan, Kohat and Bannu will go operational soon to ensure processing blood and supply its components to hospitals.
‘RBCs are state-of-the-art facilities providing advanced apheresis services, ensuring safe, high-quality platelet products for patients in need, particularly those suffering from cancer, blood disorders and other critical conditions, he said.
Director at the Institute of Pathology and Diagnostic Medicine, Khyber Medical University (KMU), Prof Yasar Mehmood Yousafzai said that safe blood transfusion was a major public health challenge particularly for patients requiring repeated transfusions, including children with thalassemia, patients with blood cancers and women with obstetric haemorrhage and trauma victims.
‘In most parts of the country, blood donation still depends heavily on family replacement donors, while paid or professional donation continues to exist in some settings which were less safe than regular voluntary donation because donors may conceal risk factors under family orfinancial pressure,’ he said.
According to him, donation shouldn’t begin when patients are already in crisis and a safe system is built on healthy, voluntary and regular donors who donate before emergencies arise.
He said the transfusiontransmissible infections, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV, syphilis and malaria, remained a major concern and the risk becomes even more serious in multitransfused patients, especially thalassemia patients, who may receive hundreds of blood units during their lifetime.
Prof Yousafzai said that RBCs had improved the quality of screening and safety but the major challenge was to develop a reliable pool of voluntary, repeat blood donors rather than continuing dependence on replacement donation.
He said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Blood Transfusion Authority (BTA) was established to regulate blood transfusion services in the province but it hadn’t been functioning to the desired level for an effective provincial blood safety system.