Blood donation practices and willingness to donate among residents of an urban slum in Lagos Nigeria.

AIM AND OBJECTIVES: This study was carried out to assess the blood donation practices and willingness to donate among residents of an urban slum.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Cross sectional descriptive study design with a qualitative and quantitative component. Multistage sampling was used to select 400 respondents for the questionnaire interview while three FGD sessions were conducted guide among three groups of participants namely youths, men and women. The information collected was analyzed manually (FGD) and with Epi info version 3.5.3.

RESULTS: Majority of the questionnaire respondents were female, married, traders, had at least secondary school education, with mean age of 37.6 years. Only 12.0% had donated in the past, the main reason given by non donors was that they had never been asked to donate; this was also a key finding in the FGD. Willingness to donate was positively associated with being a male, single and Christian, age was a significant predictor of previous donation while more of the previous donors were still willing to donate, more for family/friends (p=0.036) than voluntarily (p=0.001) this view was supported by the participants at the FGD.

CONCLUSION: Members of this urban slum had poor practice of blood donation,had positive attitude and were willing to donate, there is need to mobilise and organise outreach blood donation programs to convert attitude into actual practice.