The French Blood Establishment (EFS) of Guadeloupe called on Thursday, February 10, the population of Guadeloupe to come and donate blood. For the time being, blood collection in the archipelago does not meet the needs of patients and stocks are at their lowest throughout the national territory.
At the national level, thirty thousand pockets are missing in the reserves to find the level of security necessary to meet the needs for transfusions, had already alerted the EFS on Tuesday.
Specific needs for patients with sickle cell disease
“Locally, we depend on national solidarity and the risk is of no longer being able to transfuse all patients”explained Dr. Mireille Bordenet, responsible for the samples. “However, we have specific needs, particularly with regard to sickle cell disease, a disease that affects many West Indians and people of African origin”explains Dr. Bordenet. “However, the blood of Caucasians does not have the characteristics required for the transfusions needed to treat this disease: we need Guadeloupeans to donate their blood to treat Guadeloupeans. »
Guadeloupe has a shortage of locally collected blood bags. “We need twelve thousand pockets annually and we only take nine thousand”, recalls the doctor. Especially since Guadeloupe also supplies Guyana, on pockets with specific characteristics, since no withdrawal is made in Guyana, due to “the presence of Chagas disease”.
Collections hampered by the November roadblocks
To cover the needs in the archipelago, “it would be enough for each registered donor to travel twice a year”, regrets Nathalie Moulin, communication officer at the EFS of Guadeloupe. If the establishment regularly calls for donations, the events of recent months have affected the state of stocks.
“With the Covid, teleworking, the university remotely, contact cases and sick people, we were unable to organize the collections normally”emphasizes Dr. Bordenet. “The November roadblocks also prevented the truck from leaving for two weeks”, she explains once more. The EFS, a neighbor of the Pointe-à-Pitre University Hospital, has also suffered from the regular clashes that have taken place in front of the hospital in recent weeks.
Finally, anti-vaccine activists regularly accuse the authorities of inoculating the vaccine once morest Covid-19 through transfusion, a theory that doctors refute. “The vaccine is not transmitted by blood”assures Dr. Bordenet, who also recalls that in Guadeloupe few people are vaccinated once morest Covid-19.
