Barriers and facilitators for blood donation by migrants from sub-Saharan Africa in high‐income countries
Citation: Klinkenberg EF, Huis In’t Veld EMJ, de Wit PD, et al. Blood donation barriers and facilitators of Sub‐Saharan African migrants and minorities in Western high‐income countries: a systematic review of the literature. Transfusion Medicine. 2019;29:28-41.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: This work was supported by Sanquin Research (NL) under internal grant: PPOC-14-25.
What is this? In this systematic review, the authors searched for articles on barriers and facilitators for potential blood donors from sub-Saharan Africa who lived in high-income western countries. They excluded case reports, reviews, and viewpoints as well as studies from countries where whole blood donors received payment. They searched in June 2017 and found 31 studies from the USA (21), Australia (5), Canada (2), Israel (1), the UK (1) and France (1).
What was found: Barriers to blood donation included a lack of knowledge and awareness, negative attitudes, mistrust, ethnic discrimination, fear of needles and pain, low haemoglobin, social exclusion, and accessibility.
Facilitators for included altruism, free health checks, and specific recruitment and awareness-raising campaigns.
Implications: The authors of this review stated that strategies developed in collaboration with communities from sub-Saharan Africa to increase awareness of the need for blood, reduce barriers for blood donation, and create comfortable environments at blood banks would be valuable.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence, race, ethnicity, culture, and language.
This summary was prepared by Joly Ghanawi, checked by Sydney Johnson, and finalized by Helen Worthington.