External financial aid to blood transfusion services in sub-saharan Africa: a need for reflection

Abstract

Over the past ten years, high-income countries in the North have provided considerable financial aid to establish and support national blood transfusion services in low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This action has largely been driven by concerns relating to the contribution of blood transfusion to the HIV epidemic in the region, leading to the overwhelming objective of ‘‘safe blood.’’ Whilst there have been definite benefits to transfusion services, we believe this aid has resulted in unintended but serious negative outcomes, which we describe here and argue should prompt a re-thinking of how to provide support to blood transfusion services in sub-Saharan Africa.