Human Practices

June 14th is the World Blood Donor Day, and this year, the theme is “Give blood to others and share life.” In order to respond to this meaningful day, our team members decided to do some voluntary activities at the local blood donation bus. Our main job was to help the nurses and donors, like teaching the donors how to fill in the form, recording the donor’s information in the computer and putting the blood bags in the fridge, etc. Although the weather was really hot that day, there were still many people appeared at the blood donation bus. Some of them said that it was not their first time to do this, and some people keep joining the blood donation every year. From our voluntary activity, we learned that some detections must be performed before the donation, including the blood type, hemoglobin quantity, ALT detection, markers of HBV and Treponema pallidum. In order to deeply understand the blood donation, we also did other activities.

Things we do

• Gave out questionnaires to the public.
• Visit the Blood Center Of Shandong Province.
• Work as volunteer in blood donation bus
• Public education.

Questionnaires

We made some questionnaires regarding the knowledge of blood donation. We went to the local bookstore and science museum. People there were really friendly, they completed the papers patiently and carefully. They all made a great contribution to our project. Here are the results of our questionnaires. I just picked three typical questions. The first question is about the items the blood sample must be tested before use. We can see in the diagram: only 28.4% of the people know about it, 14.8% don’t know and most people just heard about it before, but not clear enough. The second question is about the window period: more than half of the people don’t know about it. And according to the third question, is about the benefits of blood donation. Only 46.5% of the people know the advantages of blood donation.

Visit in the Blood Center Of Shandong Province

In order to deeply understand how the blood being processed from the donors to the hospitals, our team visited the Blood Center Of Shandong province. We were shown around the building and laboratories. The labs there use negative pressure to keep the environment safe and clean. And some detections can achieve automation, which can prevent some man-made operation. Therefore, pollution can be reduced. The automated equipment are very convenient, not only can save much more time but also can keep the tests into a sterile environment. So，the tests can be more accurate. All the processes of testing are traceable. Each blood sample has a barcode, which can correspond to the donor, the data of each step must be recorded, and stored in the system. This makes the blood use traceable for the source of the problem. After the visit, our team members had an interview with the professor. We also understand the detections taken in the blood center. There are five main detections: markers of HIV, HBV, HCV, Treponema pallidum and ALT dection.