Texting For Life Project

Project Sponsor:

ROCKFELLER FOUNDATION

Project implementers:

BLOODLINK FOUNDATION & KENYA NATIONAL BLOOD TRANSFUSION SERVICES (KNBTS)..

Overview

“TEXTING FOR LIFE” project is founded on the use Short Message Service (SMS) as the means of continuous communication with blood donors. This project’s objective is to ensure that Kenya has a sustainable and adequate safe blood supply, attained through increasing the number of regular/repeat blood donors. The Short Messages sent initially will cover four major areas:

1. Acknowledging/thanking the blood donors for their participation (motivational messages),
2. Informing donors when their blood results are ready for collection, after the blood has been screened ( informative messages)
3. Reminding the donors of their next due date for donation( reminder messages)
4. Informing blood donors of an emergency blood need by people with similar blood group, (urgent messages)

Later on the scope and uses of these messages shall be expanded to address other key general health and blood donation issues.

Project’s Time Span & Scope

The pilot project will take eleven months i.e from January 2011 to November 2011, and is divided into two phases. Phase one is a survey running until the end of March, this survey among other things seeks to find out the feasibility and acceptability of SMS technology by the blood donors.
The second phase will run for the entire period of the project, blood donor’s mobile telephone number will be used to send them messages, as outlined above. This pilot Project shall cover Nairobi region.

Background

Kenya’s need for blood is locally estimated at between 200,000 and 250,000 units per year. However, with WHO guidelines of 10-20 units per 1,000 people then the need can be estimated at between 380,000 – 760,000 units annually‎1.

Currently, only 125,000 units of blood are collected through the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS), while the deficit is thought to be covered by family replacement donors. Family replacement donors according to studies have been shown to account for 35 percent of donors in Kenya, despite them being more risky‎1. Blood supply situation in Kenya is further aggravated by the fact that over 70 percent of blood donors are first time and one time donors‎2.

Undoubtedly, having a pool of safe regular blood donors is one of the main strategies to ensuring a sustainable and adequate blood supply. This calls for a long term relationship between the blood donor and blood service facilitated by interactive communication between the two. In Kenya, every year about 500,000 potential donors are educated about blood donation by receiving direct information (e.g., talks, pamphlets, and other written material) offered by blood bank staff at different recruitment sites including schools, colleges and universities‎2. The focus of these communications has been to equip the blood donor with information on all aspects of blood donation including benefits, risks and transfusion transmissible infections (TTI) and healthy living.

Although all blood donors are made aware that they can receive their blood test results on the entire TTIs only one in twenty visit the blood transfusion centers to pick their results. Those who visit benefit from further counseling and if positive for any of the TTIs are referred for care and treatment.

Conclusion

The use of mobile phone based services in Kenya has been largely successful, various projects carried out in sports, agriculture, financial services among others areas are an indicator that the possibility of TEXTING FOR LIFE project achieving the desired objective are high. When this happens the project will be scaled up to cover the entire country.

CONTACT
For any correspondence about this project, email projects@bloodlinkfoundation.org or info@bloodlinkfoundation.org .