Abstract:
Donating blood is an act that can save the lives of thousands of people worldwide. It will further help us in improving health there by removing the problem behind blood donation. Studying on practice and associated factors of donors to donate blood regularly are essential to improving health there by removing the problem behind blood donation and the successful implementation of the blood donation programmers.
Objective: To assess practice and associated factors towards blood donation among health professionals in University of Gondar Hospital, northwest Ethiopia.
Methods: Institution based cross-sectional study was deployed from March to April, 2015 in the University of Gondar Hospital. Stratified sampling technique was used to select 422 health workers of University of Gondar Hospital. The data were collected by using simple random sampling method by using pre tested self-administrated questionnaire and entered in to Epi Info version 3.5.1, then transferred to SPSS version 20 for farther analysis. Bi-variable and multi variable logistic regression was done to identify factors associated practice of blood donation.
Results: This study has identified that 33.6% of the study participants had ever practiced blood donation. 50.5% of the study participants had good knowledge and good practice towards blood donation, 48.3 had favorable attitude and good practice towards blood donation. Participant’s age above 25 years (AOR = 1.82, 95% CI: 1.10, 3.03), those who are knowledgeable about blood donation (AOR = 1.96, 95% CI: 1.20, 3.20), having favorable attitude towards donating their blood (AOR = 3.00, 95% CI: 1. 87, 4.99), and those whose family member or relatives had ever had received blood (AOR = 15.34, 95% CI: 7.69, 30.60) were factors which were significantly associated with practice of blood donation.
Conclusion and Recommendations: Hospital health workers practice to donate blood was found to be low. Factors like Age, Having a family member or relative who had ever received blood, knowledge of blood donation and attitude of blood donation have an effect on blood donation practice. Continues and consistence promotional works by the hospital administrators and other stake holders Will be very important.
