Why Voluntary, Regular Blood Donation Counts!

Every year, Cameroon joins the international community to observe World Blood Donor Day on June 14. This year's celebration is held under the theme: "One Drop of Humanity. Give Blood. Save Lives." Every day, blood products save mothers facing complications during childbirth, children suffering from severe anaemia, road accident victims, surgical patients and persons living with chronic illnesses. Yet, despite scientific progress and improvements in transfusion safety worldwide, blood remains the only therapeutic product that cannot be manufactured. It depends entirely on the willingness of men and women to donate voluntarily and regularly. This message resonates particularly strongly in Cameroon today. The blood shortage situation experienced some months back in some health facilities, notably at the Yaoundé Central Hospital, served as a reminder of the challenges that remain before us. It highlighted a reality that we must collectively confront: despite the progress made, the culture of regular voluntary blood donation is not yet sufficiently rooted in our society to guarantee optimal availability of blood products under all circumstances. The National Blood Transfusion Service, sole operator in matters of blood transfusion in Cameroon, has made significant efforts in recent years, though much remains to be done if Cameroon is to achieve a level of blood security capable of withstanding periods of exceptional demand. This lesson has reinforced our determination to accelerate reforms already underway and to strengthen the foundations of a resilient national transfusion system. The analysis of our 2025 performance indicators reveals encouraging progress. National blood collections increased from 147,034 units in 2022 to 158,481 in 2023, 165,708 in 2024 and reached 187,224 units in 2025. This represents the strongest annual increase recorded during the period under review. As a result, national blood coverage improved from approximately 37% in 2022 to nearly 47% in 2025. While this progress is significant, it also highlights the scale of the challenge ahead. Our estimated national requirement remains approximately 400,000 units annually. In practical terms, despite the remarkable mobilisation efforts deployed by the NBTS and its partners, Cameroon currently satisfies less than half of its national blood needs. This reality explains why the NBTS continues to intensify its efforts in awareness creation, donor mobilisation, technical strengthening and territorial deployment. Nevertheless, these results confirm that our strategy is producing measurable impact. They demonstrate that communication, community mobilisation and proximitybased recruitment of donors are yielding results. They also demonstrate that behavioural change is possible when awareness efforts are sustained and targeted. From crisis management to system building Following the lessons drawn from the shortages observed earlier this year, the NBTS has reinforced communication and coordination mechanisms with stakeholders throughout the transfusion chain. Today, we are working towards a more harmonised system that enables regular monitoring of available blood stocks and facilitates rapid information sharing between health facilities and the NBTS. Our ambition is to progressively establish a system that offers greater visibility of available blood resources across the country, much like the mechanisms that allow citizens to identify pharmacies on duty. The objective is simple, better anticipation, faster response and improved coordination. This strengthened communication architecture now enables more frequent exchanges with hospitals, blood banks, donor associations and regional stakeholders, thereby improving our capacity to anticipate shortages before they become crises. The national blood transfusion policy and the NBTS strategic plan One of the most important developments of this year is the completion of two major strategic instruments. The first is the National Policy on Blood Transfusion. The second is the Strategic Plan of the National Blood Transfusion Service for the period 2026-2030. These documents represent a decisive step forward for blood transfusion governance in Cameroon. They provide a coherent framework for the development of the sector and define the vision, priorities and actions required to ensure universal access to safe blood products. The Strategic Plan was developed following a thorough assessment of the national transfusion landscape. It acknowledges important challenges that continue to affect the system, notably, insufficient national coverage of blood needs, low levels of voluntary unpaid blood donation, significant regional disparities in access to blood products, shortages of specialised human resources, ageing infrastructure and equipment in several blood banks, challenges related to transfusion safety and supply of critical laboratory inputs and the need for more sustainable financing mechanisms. Faced with these challenges, the vision of the NBTS for the period 2026-2030 is to build a modern, efficient, equitable and secure national transfusion system capable of providing sufficient and safe blood products to all Cameroonians whenever and wherever they are needed. Deployment, modernisation and innovation The implementation of the PADOC Project has considerably strengthened this vision. Supported by several technical partners and funded by Expertise France, this project has already enabled significant advances in training, digitalisation, governance and strengthening of hospital blood banks. More than 660 health professionals have been enrolled in training programmes, over 330 have successfully completed their courses and fourteen hospital blood banks have benefited from targeted support. The project is also laying the groundwork for a modern data management system and a more structured approach to community mobilisation. Strengthening quality and transfusion safety Beyond increasing blood collections, the responsibility of the NBTS is above all to guarantee that every blood product made available to patients meets the highest s...