ABSTRACT

Blood can save millions of life and young people are the hope and future of safe blood supply in the world. There is a considerable shortage of blood with the supply being less than 50% of the requirement. A study was carried at Kampala international University western campus among the university students with the purpose of assessing the knowledge, attitude and practice of students on voluntary blood donation. A descriptive cross sectional study of quantitative nature was used and stratified and simple random sampling methods were used to select 81 respondents. Data was collected using a self-administered questionnaire tool. The results indicated that the respondents had relatively good knowledge about voluntary blood donation although knowledge gaps were observed in a number of attempted questions where 39(%) answered that eligible blood donor’s weight starts from 30kg, while 12(%) circled “I don’t know, (15%) knew self-donor as the best source of blood for donation, 6(7%) answered remunerated donor then 4(5%) didn’t know the answer,29 (36%) answered that blood donation starts at the age of 15years, 9 knew that blood donation starts at below 18 years while 8(10%) didn’t know the answer and among others20(25%) of the respondents didn’t know health condition that would require blood while 5(5%) left the question unanswered. More emphasis is required to improve awareness of university students about voluntary blood donation. Concerning attitude, respondents had a positive attitude towards voluntary blood donation and the biggest number 70(85%) were willing to donate voluntarily if contacted in future. Therefore this should be taken as an opportunity to give these young and potential donors correct information on the process of blood donation as well as the iii knowledge on the value of blood in saving lives. Even though most of the respondents had relatively good knowledge and positive attitude only a few 35 (43%) had donated blood in the past and blood donation retention rate was also observed to be low among the respondents evidenced by very low percentage 8.6% of respondents who have ever donated blood for three or more times. Therefore health educators especially those who work closely with blood collection facilities need to recognize this issue and determine the most donation process to help retain blood donors in the university setting.