Dr Uche Ozoalor, the State Coordinator of the National Blood Transmission Service, Enugu Centre on Saturday, urged Nigerians to get involved in non-remuneration blood donation to save life.
Ozoalor, who gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu, said it was important for people who believe they were healthy and also certified healthy by the centre to donate blood to save another life.
He said that the centre was recording appreciable progress in blood donor awareness creation programmes before now, adding that the sponsorship from the American government has stopped.
He explained that people were not responding well to donating blood when funding support from the foreign donor was not forth-coming .
He however said that the centre was having challenges of power supply due to lack of fund to power the generating set .
“Due to lack of fund, awareness creation programmes about non-remuneration blood donation are no longer carried out as it was when the foreign donor was donating fund and other materials to the centres,” he said.
The coordinator noted that constant power supply was needed for the storage of blood as it required to be stored in a very narrow temperature range.
According to him, the centre has been assured that the agency’s programme have been captured in the current budget.
” We are hoping that when government release funds soon,we intend to implement some of our programmes,”he said.(NAN)