ORIGINAL ARTICLE 166 P J M H S Vol. 13, NO. 1, JAN – MAR 2019 Knowledge and Attitude towards Blood Donation in Educated and Illiterate Blood Donors Attending a Tertiary Care Hospital in Lahore MUHAMMAD ATIF 1 , BEENISH SHAHBAZ 2 , SYED NASIR ABBAS BUKHARI 3 , SONIA YOUNAS 4 , HASAN EJAZ 5 1,5 Department of Clinical Laboratory Sciences, College of Applied Medical Sciences, Jouf University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 2 School of Allied Health Sciences, The Children’s Hospital and The Institute of Child Health, Lahore, Pakistan. 3 Department of Peads Haematology Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplant, The Children’s Hospital and The Institute of Child Health, Lahore, Pakistan. 4 Department of Microbiology, Al Razi Healthcare Lahore Correspondence: Muhammad Atif, Email: maahmad@ju.edu.sa; aatif03@gmail.com, Cell: +966 55 762 6811 ABSTRACT Aim: To assess the knowledge and attitude of educated and illiterate blood donors visited a tertiary care paediatric institute for blood donation. Methods: The present cross-sectional study was held from June 2016 to December 2016 on 246 blood donors through a structured survey questionnaire. The collected data checked for its accuracy, consistency and completeness before analysis. Results: Total population of this study comprises of 246 blood donors, 188(76.4%) of which educated and 58(23.6%) were illiterate. There were 239(97.2%) males and 7(2.8%) females in this study. The overall knowledge on blood donation was highest among educated blood donors (91.7%) and lowest among illiterate blood donors (73.2%). Similar results obtained for positive attitude for the blood donation of educated (97.1%) and illiterate (76.7%) blood donors. Conclusion: This study confirms that motivation to donate blood was higher amongst the blood donor with more knowledge and positive attitude towards blood donation. The awareness and knowledge have a significant impact on blood donation in general population. Keywords: Blood bank, blood donation, educated and illiterate blood donor INTRODUCTION Blood donation is a natural gift for patients in emergencies because it can save their lives. Despite its heavy demand, only 20-30% of the world’s healthcare systems can meet the requirement of safe and healthy blood transfusion. 1,2 Everyday there is a massive demand for blood in all parts of the world in people of all age groups. Millions of blood bags are collected every year, yet the demand is increasing every day pushing for the adequate and timely provision of blood. 3,4 Historically, Blood transfusion has been used as a treatment of choice for severe blood loss in wars, but nowadays, it is an important component in managing healthcare emergencies. 5 Despite saving millions of lives every year by blood transfusion, yet the safety and quality of blood transfusion are still the concern particularly in the developing countries. 6 Well organised blood transfusion services (BTS) are the backbone of a health care system, which in turn relies on the availability of volunteer blood donors. BTS uses the awareness and knowledge-based strategies on the social mobilisation of the valuable human resource in the form of Voluntary Blood Donation (VBD) 7,8 Despite enormous efforts and many programs being organised worldwide regarding blood transfusion, the availability of safe and adequate blood remains insufficient to meet the increasing demand in developing countries including Pakistan. The major challenge is the recruitment of non-paid, voluntary blood donors to transfusion services. 9 Problems faced in this regard include lack of awareness/knowledge, misconception, negative attitude towards voluntary blood donation and lack of infrastructure resulting in the low practice of donation 10 . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Received on 13-07-2018 Accepted on 10-11-2018 Increasing the percentage of regular donors is a significant step in fulfilling the demand for blood supply 11 . The decision to donate blood is encouraged by factors including education and knowledge among blood donors. Increasing the level of knowledge, awareness and positive attitude towards blood transfusion is the priority of all national blood transfusion centres in Pakistan. The first step to achieve this is to conduct comprehensive studies about knowledge and attitude of the people regarding blood donation to gauge the current scenario, beliefs and both positive and negative attitudes of the people regarding blood donation 12 . Fear of needles, pain, future weakness, an objection from elders, illiteracy and ignorance are the primary causes why people hesitate in donating blood. All these myths and misconceptions are to be removed in order to collect a sufficient amount of blood in blood banks for saving the life of the patients 13,14 . We aimed our study to determine the knowledge and attitude about blood donation and transfusion in blood donors attending a tertiary care hospital in Lahore. METHODS The present study was based on cross-sectional research design, where both qualitative and quantitative methods were used through a structured survey questionnaire. This study included blood donors 18 to 60 years of age visited at The Children’s Hospital & The Institute of Child Health, Lahore from June 2016 to December 2016. The study was approved by the institutional Ethical Committee. The data was collected by using a self-administered questionnaire which was prepared in English. The questionnaire includes sociodemographic factors, knowledge and attitude.