International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | April 2016 | Vol 3 | Issue 4 Page 952 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Jain J et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2016 Apr;3(4):952-956 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Research Article A cross-sectional study among community on knowledge, attitude and practice about blood donation in Udaipur city of Rajasthan, India Jyoti Jain*, Mukul Dixit INTRODUCTION Human blood is an essential element of human life and there is no substitute of it. 1 Since, there is a considerable shortage of blood, even in large metro cities, with the supply being less than 50% of the requirement. 2 The only source of blood is by blood donation. 3 However, recruitment of voluntary, non-remunerated blood donors pose major challenges to transfusion services throughout the world. 4 Blood and blood products are a unique and precious resource because they can be obtained only from individual who donate blood or its component. About 92 million blood donations are being done annually throughout the world. 5 Safe blood is a critical component in improving the health care and in preventing the spread of infectious disease globally. Millions of lives are saved every year through blood transfusion, but yet the quality and the safety of blood transfusion is still a concern, particularly in developing countries. 6 Thus, the need for blood is growing day by day as a result of advancement in the clinical medicine. In terms of need for blood transfusion, it is noted that in India, the death toll which is caused by road accident has increased due to unavailability of blood transfusion services near the accident site. 7 Thus, every person in community should have knowledge, attitude and practice about blood donation and therefore this study has been done to assess their ABSTRACT Background: This study has been carried out to find out the knowledge, attitude and practice about blood donation in community of Udaipur city. Methods: This study was conducted in Udaipur city of Rajasthan on the community regarding to know about knowledge, attitude and practice about blood donation. For this sample of 755 respondents were taken during the period of 1st December 2015- 15th January 2016 on the basis of statistical method of sample size determination. Results: Majority of respondents were having awareness and knowledge about blood donation. Practice of donation was found to be more in males are more as compared to females. Females prefer more to donate blood for their relatives and family than others as compared to males. Frequency of donation blood was found to be more in male than female donors. Conclusions: The community has become more aware of the facts about blood donation. More and more people have started donating blood. Thus provision of adequate privacy, awareness communication materials and advertisements to address the fear factor may strengthen the recruitment and retention of voluntary blood donors to donate blood on regular basis to achieve 100% of blood donation. Keywords: Blood donation, Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, Community Department of Community Medicine, Geetanjali Medical College and Hospital, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India Received: 09 February 2016 Accepted: 05 March 2016 *Correspondence: Dr. Jyoti Jain, E-mail: jyotimeetu17@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20160935