A story of blood and dedication

MamaYe’s Advocacy Advisor, Sowo Lebbie, knows a thing or two about how important blood is during childbirth. Sowo’s powerful testimony during the MamaYe launch describes surviving heavy bleeding during childbirth thanks to being able to give birth in a safe clinic.In Sierra Leone, an estimated two women die a day [1] in pregnancy because of heavy bleeding due to pregnancy or childbirth, many of whom could be saved if more blood was available at times of emergency when it’s needed. You can read more about why giving blood is important through Fatou’s blogs (click here and here). this is particularly important in thinking about potential treatments for Ebola - click here to read more about why that is.This is why MamaYe are supporting the activities of those working towards increasing the number of people who give blood voluntarily and freely. This is in support of the Government’s National Safe Blood Policy, in a setting where there is not only not enough blood available in blood banks, but also where most of the blood available comes from family replacement donors who give blood at the time of an emergency whether to donate directly to their relative in need, or to replace blood used for their relative if their blood group is not compatible.The National Safe Blood Services and their network of highly committed voluntary blood donor clubs work tirelessly to recruit new and motivate previous donors to give blood voluntarily. Messaging is key to this, and it is important to know what motivates people to give blood, and to know what their concerns are.  In order to make sure that our messaging is effective, MamaYe, hand in hand with the national safe blood services, is conducting research to understand what motivates donors and potential donors to give blood, and what prevents them from donating. This will help us develop targeted donor mobilisation and education and communication messages and materials to in support of the work of the donor recruiters and safe blood services.A team of researchers spent a few days at the end of June and beginning of July 2014 in Kabala of Koinadugu district colleting the data. We were lucky to have Steven Gibrilla, the District Coordinator of Koinadugu Voluntary Blood Donor promoters and MamaYe District Lead Activist to help us arrange the study and all the meetings with various people.Big up for Steven, who really worked incredibly hard to make the research happen! You can read more about the amazing with that Steven does in this blog.The research team sought the views and experiences from 70 members of the community, both donors and people who had never given blood, men and women through focus groups.We were lucky to have a fabulous data collection team, and Mr Saio Kamara from the National Safe Blood Services generously gave his time to support the research team and acted as our technical resource, answering specific questions from the participants of the focus groups. We also interviewed experts in the field of blood donation promotion and collection.We look forward to sharing the results from this research once the data has been analysed and verified.In the mean time, MamaYe extends a very big THANK YOU to all those who took part in organising, and participating the study![1] An estimated 2,400 women died in Sierra Leone each year due to complications in pregnancy or due to childbirth  (WHO, 2014).  Among those, an estimated third of these deaths  are due to haemorrhage (2,400 / 33% = 792).Per day, this is 2.1 women dying due to haemorrhage (792 / 365 days)