Attitudes Towards Blood Donation in Malaysia

Donating blood is undoubtedly a great way to save lives because it benefits both the recipient and the donor. The blood supply in a country is correlated to voluntary and unpaid donors because they are the most secure blood donation group with the lowest risk of transmitted illnesses. However, the Malaysian National Blood Centre points out that nearly all states confronted the issue of finding and maintaining blood donors. Thus, the purpose of this journal article is to examine the relationship between gender, motivation, and impediment variables for blood donation within younger age group blood donors (between 18-26).

In Kota Bahru, Kelantan, Malaysia, 391 young blood donors signed a declaration of agreement to participate in this research. The authors conducted the study utilizing a series of a questionnaire created by specialists who had previously examined this issue, with their permission to adapt the questions. The questionnaire was available in Malay and English versions to facilitate respondents’ responses. Besides the questionnaires, the authors also used the Cronbach’s alpha test in accessing the authenticity of the obtained data and used Pearson’s chi-squared to examine the relationship between blood donation frequency and the chance of repeat blood donation.

Referring to the data collected, the factor that most encourages youth to donate blood is the altruistic thinking of one’s existence (98%), where 98.9% of females and 96.1% of males selected this option. In today’s technologically advanced and self-centered culture, they possessed strong desires to help others and carry social responsibility in donating blood. Furthermore, 95% of female and 93.8% of male respondents point out that they are inspired to donate blood because the country is experiencing a blood supply deficit (94.6%). Besides that, 90.5% of female and 87.6% of male participants agreed that a comfortable atmosphere for blood donation helps motivate young people to donate blood because youth are more likely to donate again when they are satisfied with the donation environment and having a pleasant experience throughout the donation procedure (89.5%). Moreover, 70.2% of females and 72.1% of males chose peer-influenced (70.8%) as one of the significant motivating factors in donating blood. The results show that getting word-of-mouth and spiritual support from friends who are blood donors can increase a person’s probability to donate blood. Lastly, 66% of female and 58.1% of male respondents in the research mentioned that they are motivated to donate blood because it makes them feel like a hero (63.4%).

Based on the information gathered, the most discouraging factor towards blood donation rated by 35.1% of female and 22.5% of male respondents was they dislike missing classes to donate blood (30.9%) because blood donation clashed with the class time. Thus, changing the timing of blood donation to weekends or prolonging the blood donation period as they can donate blood during their free time or after school. Next, 9.9% of female and 7% of male participants are reluctant to become blood donors because they are hemophobia (9.2%). This problem can be solved by instilling an early education or sharing experiences by repeat donors to minimize their concern about blood. Moreover, 9.2% of females and 7.8% of males felt worse after donating blood (8.7%) because they experienced side effects, such as mild headaches, dizziness, etc. It can avoid by urging donors to increase their water consumption before starting to donate blood. Whereas 7.6% of female and 9.3% of male respondents also rated that donating blood is excruciatingly unpleasant (8.2%). The pain during the donation process can reduce by administering some local anesthesia or attracting the attention of blood donors. Lastly, 7.3% of females and 7% of males felt that donating blood is irksome (7.2%) as it is time-consuming (6.9%). The solution is to arrange sufficient staff and keep an eye on the donation process from time to time, which can effectively reduce the duration of blood donation.

In this research, they discovered that the most appealing incentives in recruiting or retaining young blood donors are by giving out the items painted with the logo of blood donation (87%), such as T-shirts, mugs, etc. It followed by providing a free snack bag after donating (78.5%), including a bottle of beverage mineral waters, a small muffin, etc. Next, young people entice to blood donation because of the food shopping vouchers (74.4%). Therefore, these are the top 3 rewards that most attract young people to become blood donors.

The findings of this study are young blood donors in Kelantan, Malaysia, possessed a positive behavior toward blood donation. It also examined a good understanding of what stops youngsters from becoming blood donors. With this, I believe this article was beneficial because it allows the blood donation agencies to improve on the deterring factors mentioned in the report, so the number of young blood donors can gradually increase in society.