Team:JNFLS/Human Practices

Human Practice

June 14th is the World Blood Donor Day, the theme in 2018 is “Give blood to others and share life.” In order to response to this meaningful day, our team members decided to take place in some voluntary activities, so we chose to go to the local blood donation bus just near the Quancheng Square in Shandong Province.

We went there on that day. Although there are many people on the square, there were only few people in the blood donation bus. After asked the staffs working there, we started to work. Our job was simple, just taught the donors how to fill the form before donation, recorded the donor’s information in the computer and put the blood bags in the fridge, etc.

Not only we helped a lot, but also learnt that there are some detections must be performed before the blood donation. They are as follow:

  • Blood type of the donor
  • Hemoglobin quantity
  • ALT detection
  • Markers of HBV and Treponema pallidum

These detections are really important, if one of these items is not qualified, the donor cannot take part in the blood donation. And these detections are just a primary detection, the blood need to be sent to the blood center to perform further detections.

But now the question is there is a problem called “window period”, and the detections taken in blood center cannot detect the varies like HCV, HIV in the window period, which is very dangerous. So, we decided the method to find the way to shorten the window period as our project.

Our team members went to the blood donation bus again at summer holiday and we also acquired some questionnaires regarding the knowledge of blood donation. It was upset that there were still a few people at the bus during the holiday. We went to the local book store near the square and science museum to give out the questionnaires.

We gave out about 200 questionnaires and collected the data below.

From these results, we found that not so many people know about the blood donation and some also held some perceptions.

Integrated

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 showed 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 is 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 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:

  1. Markers of HIV
  2. Markers of HBV
  3. Markers of HCV
  4. Markers of Treponema pallidum
  5. Markers of ALT detection

The main problem we found from the interview was that Shandong province did not detect dangerous blood in the window period from nucleic acid levels for several years. And the shortage of blood supply is also a serious problem.

Combine with the interview and the questionnaire results, we found that today’s blood donation is facing a serious situation: the public’s perception of blood donation is biased and the governments’ dissemination is not strong enough. So, we decided to do some public education and encourage more citizens to join in the blood donation. We held a small lecture just under the blood donation bus. The lecture was about the advantages of blood donation, and some preferential policies that made by the government to reward the blood donors. The lecture was successful, many people decided to donate and would like to share these knowledges to their families and friends.