PESHAWAR: As the Blood Donor Day is being observed today (Sunday), health experts have called for the promotion of voluntary donation, improvement of regulation, strengthening of blood screening and protection of patients who depend on blood for survival.

Despite slight upswing in the blood collection by the regional blood centres, experts advocate reforms in blood transfusion services to promote voluntary donation and move away from replacement and paid donation for a sustained culture of regular donation.

Manager of the Regional Blood Centre Peshawar Dr Adnan Riyat told Dawn that the RBC had collected 1,475 units of bloods from 82 medical camps as of May 31 this year, compared with 4,125 in the entire 2025.

“We are working with colleges, universities and communities for better blood collection,” he said.

Official says working with educational institutions, communities to collect more blood

Presently three RBCs, including Peshawar, Swat and Abbottabad are functional while Mardan, Kohat and Bannu will go operational soon to ensure processing blood and supply its components to hospitals.

“RBCs are state-of-the-art facilities providing advanced apheresis services, ensuring safe, high-quality platelet products for patients in need, particularly those suffering from cancer, blood disorders and other critical conditions,” he said.

Director at the Institute of Pathology and Diagnostic Medicine, Khyber Medical University (KMU), Prof Yasar Mehmood Yousafzai said that safe blood transfusion was a major public health challenge particularly for patients requiring repeated transfusions, including children with thalassemia, patients with blood cancers and women with obstetric haemorrhage and trauma victims.

“In most parts of the country, blood donation still depends heavily on family replacement donors, while paid or professional donation continues to exist in some settings which were less safe than regular voluntary donation because donors may conceal risk factors under family or financial pressure,” he said.

According to him, donation shouldn’t begin when patients are already in crisis and a safe system is built on healthy, voluntary and regular donors who donate before emergencies arise.

He said the transfusion-transmissible infections, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV, syphilis and malaria, remained a major concern and the risk becomes even more serious in multi-transfused patients, especially thalassemia patients, who may receive hundreds of blood units during their lifetime.

Prof Yousafzai said that RBCs had improved the quality of screening and safety but the major challenge was to develop a reliable pool of voluntary, repeat blood donors rather than continuing dependence on replacement donation.

He said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Blood Transfusion Authority (BTA) was established to regulate blood transfusion services in the province but it hadn’t been functioning to the desired level for an effective provincial blood safety system.

“It should be strengthened with adequate technical staff, inspection capacity, licensing powers, haemovigilance mechanisms and enforcement support so that all public and private blood banks could be monitored according to uniform standards,” he said.

The director said without a functional BTA, blood safety remained dependent on individual institutions rather than a province-wide regulated system.

He said the province needed an active authority that could licence, inspect, standardise and audit blood banks and ensure that unsafe practices are eliminated.

“Blood safety required more than laboratory testing in addition to donors’ selection, proper questioning, infection screening, storage quality, traceability and strong regulation. The KMU recently signed a MoU with ‘Blood Heroes’ to promote lifelong voluntary blood donation among students, faculty and the wider community,” he said.

Prof Yousafzai said under the collaboration, awareness sessions, donor registration drives and regular voluntary blood donation campaigns would be organised.

He said a KMU research showed that a structured pre-donation questionnaire could significantly reduce the risk of transfusion-transmissible infections by identifying high-risk donors before blood collection.

“Our research shows that careful donor selection before donation can reduce the burden of infected blood units entering the system. We are also working on thalassemia prevention through carrier screening, molecular testing and prenatal diagnosis at the Institute of Pathology and Diagnostic Medicine,” he said.

The director said the goal was twofold: to provide safe blood to those who needed transfusion today, and to prevent avoidable transfusion-dependent disease in future generations.

Chairman of the Hamza Foundation Ijaz Ali Khan said the organisation had 1,572 registered patients of thalassemia, hemophilia and blood cancer who needed blood transfusion every fortnight.

“We urge government to take steps for promoting voluntary donations and help patients,” he told Dawn.

Published in Dawn, June 14th, 2026