The drying up of donor funds to provide free blood is a major set back to pregnant women in Zimbabwe. Pregnant mothers will now have to pay more to get blood in the event that they encounter complications during delivery. According to the Herald, a pint of blood costs US$65 in Government institutions and US$50 in mission hospitals. This will automatically see an increase in maternal costs on pregnant mothers who have been struggling to pay maternity fees. Of note are very interesting points from the article where the National Blood Transfusion was quoted saying, “the cost of collecting and processing a pint of blood is about US$129 yet it is being sold to mission and Government hospitals at US$50 and US$65 respectively”. So one wonders whether if this is true since the organization gets free donations of blood from the public. The donor-funded progamme is coming to an end this month and government has not come up with a backup plan to avert a shortage of blood in public hospitals and clinics.

This entry was posted on June 26th, 2012 at 3:33 pm by Lenard Kamwendo and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.