Motivating Factors among Blood Donors in Pune, India.

Sir,

In India, the National Blood Donation Policy emphasizes on supplying safe blood to the individuals in need, which can be achieved with voluntary blood donation as Indian law forbids the collection of blood via paid donors. Voluntary blood donation increased from 54.4% in 2006–2007 to 79.4% in 2015–2016. The National AIDS Control Organisation aims to increase the voluntary blood donation to 90%,[1] which can happen only by motivating large number of people. An observational study was conducted on 181 voluntary blood donors at camps held by two blood banks in Pune city during September to November 2015, to determine the motivating factors for blood donation. After taking necessary ethical clearance and consent, respondents were interviewed using a predesigned, pretested, and structured questionnaire. Data analysis was performed using IBM SPSS (Version 20; SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA). Principal Component Analysis was used to find the significant factors for blood donation. Eigenvalue >1 was considered as significant.

In the study, the mean age was found to be 29.85 ± 6.38 years. The donation camps were held mostly near the software company offices in Pune, making the participation of the 21–30 years age group maximum. Male dominance was seen with 85.6% and female being 14.4%. This can be attributed to high rejection rates due to anemia, low weight, and fear of physical harm and needles.[2] A majority of the donors (68.5%) were repeat donors.

It was observed that the altruism and empathy was the most important and significant factor (Eigenvalue = 1.62), followed by the influence of friends and family and strengthening of self-esteem (Eigenvalue = 1.32 and 1.10, respectively). Similar findings were observed on using principal component analysis on the groups of repeat donors and the first-time donors [Table 1].

Table 1

Total variance of motivating factors in all donors

Besides altruism and empathy, social reasons, positive experiences, moral obligations, and need to save a friend and family member have been identified as factors for blood donation by few other studies.[345]

Among the participants, 86.18% were not in support of any kind of remuneration as most of them considered blood donation as a voluntary, nonrewarding act whereas 11.6% supported for monetary remunerations and 2.2% supported for nonmonetary remunerations such as free routine investigations and discounted price for the use of blood bag.

It is worth noting that no donors regarded the public awareness or use of social media as motivators. Hence, these can be used to further promote the donors.

The social fabric in India is mainly based on the factors of charity/donations. The charity is believed to be in a manner to help others, and the person doing the charity has nothing to gain.

Family members, especially elders being a good influence on the younger generation, can be promoted to influence the other members of the family to donate blood.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.