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Covid-19: Blood shortage at the Maputo provincial hospital, in Matola – Mozambique
2:14 CAT | 18 May 2020
File photo: Noticias ao Minuto
Maputo Provincial Hospital. located in Matola, has a shortage of blood, as a result of the new coronavirus reducing the number of blood donors. The largest health unit in Maputo province currently has just over twenty units of blood for surgical activities, where it should ideally have at least forty units on hand.
“At this moment, the hospital is counting on blood replacement, not voluntary donors, and currently, we have no [blood collection] brigades, so we are counting purely on people’s goodwill. But if a patient has needs two or three blood bags, he will receive only one,” said Lúcia Chate, the person responsible for clinical analysis and Matola Provincial Hospital’s blood bank.
Before the state of emergency, the blood bank would expect an average of ten blood donors a day.
The alert from Matola hospital comes about a month after Maputo Central Hospital (HCM), Mozambique’s largest health unit, announced that it also risked running out of blood reserves altogether because the number of donors had fallen.
At the time, HCM clinical director Farid Ursi appealed to those not at risk of severe disease due to the new coronavirus, that is, those under the age of 70, “to go to the blood bank to give”.
The main donors, he said, were students, churchgoers and other people, who had seen their routines changed by the state of emergency regulations in force since April 1.
The solution, in this case, was to take blood from family members closest to the patients needing transfusions.
Mozambique reported on Sunday (May 17) an accumulated total of 137 cases of infection with the new coronavirus, with no deaths and 44 people accounted fully recovered.
Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi admitted on Friday (May 15) that, if some issues persist, such as levels of internal circulation remaining high, tougher measures could be considered.
The state of emergency runs until the end of May.
“The next 15 days will be decisive in determining what will happen after this second stage,” the president said, while underlining that “now is not the time to relax the measures”.
Source: Radio Moçambique / Lusa
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