By Ma. Teresa Montemayor/PNA
MANILA — To save more lives and to encourage more people to donate blood, the Philippine Blood Center (PBC) on Thursday held an open forum for all its partner government agencies and private organizations.
“Our goal in PBC is to have enough blood supply in all hospitals in the country and we cannot do this without the help of our donors. Being our partners, we value your suggestions and we need to let you know policy changes for better service,” PBC Donor Management officer-in-charge Melanie Sionzon said.
Since the country is in the Pacific Ring of Fire, Sionzon said many Filipinos become victims of natural disasters, hence the need for blood or blood transfusion.
“Apart from natural disasters, there are also emergencies. In 2017, almost 1 million lives have been affected by them and we need an adequate supply for all these, plus traumas due to road accidents,” she added.
At the forum, “Dugong Bayani – Kabalikat Partnership”, PBC reported its achievements for the past years, saying it has collected 44,898 bags of blood, which is 12,487 more when its blood collection started in 2015.
Meanwhile, PBC’s partners commended the center’s services but also raised the common problems they encounter when donating or requesting for blood units.
Senior Master Sgt. Daniel Laigo of the Philippine Marine Corps, one of PBC’s partner agencies, said they have never been so sure about the safety of blood they are getting from donors.
“Our partnership with PBC helped us a lot because with just a text to our coordinator even in the middle of the night, we’d still be able to get blood,” he said.
A representative of the office of Quezon City Vice Mayor Joy Belmonte lauded the efficiency of PBC’s coordinators when setting up mobile blood donations.
“Maganda ang partnership ninyo with the office of the vice mayor kasi maganda rin ang performance ng coordinator na ibinibigay ng PBC sa amin. Bigyan po ninyo kami ng hindi maayos na coordinator, hindi rin maayos ang partnership natin (Your partnership with the office of the vice mayor because the performance of the coordinator PBC gives us. Give us a non-performing coordinator, our partnership won’t be good) because we have experienced working with other centers with a bad staff,” she said.
A few of the problems, which PBC’s other partners raised, were the inadequate supply of blood units in other parts of the country, lack of reagents and blood packs, and refusal of most private hospitals to receive blood from PBC for patients.
Sionzon said PBC is about to create policy changes that will implement a direct distribution system. It will enable people in far-flung areas to request for free blood from the hospitals near them.
“As for the reagents and logistic problems, we’re addressing that, although our PBC head had been resourceful there are still challenges, we just hope that all our proposals would be addressed by the Department of Health so we can achieve our goals,” she said.
