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9 Things You Should Know About The Blood Donation Process

One of the reasons why people don't give blood is because they have no idea how the blood donation process works. At the LifeBank launch, we are inviting medical practitioners to shed more light on blood donation. There'll be free food and mini physicals too. You should bring a friend. To register, go here.

Here's a few things you should know about the blood donation process:

Donating blood is a safe process. A sterile needle is used only once for each donor and then discarded.

Blood donation is a simple four-step process: registration, medical history and mini-physical, donation and refreshments.

Every blood donor is given a mini-physical, checking the donor's temperature, blood pressure, pulse and hemoglobin to ensure it is safe for the donor to give blood.

The actual blood donation typically takes less than 10-12 minutes. The entire process, from the time you arrive to the time you leave, takes about an hour and 15 min.

The average adult has about 10 pints of blood in his body. Roughly 1 pint is given during a donation.

A healthy donor may donate red blood cells every 56 days, or double red cells every 112 days.

A healthy donor may donate platelets as few as 7 days apart, but a maximum of 24 times a year.

All donated blood is tested for HIV, hepatitis B and C, syphilis and other infectious diseases before it can be released to hospitals.

Information you give to the the donation process is confidential. It may not be released without your permission except as directed by law.

To find out where you can give blood, go here.

Photo Credit: angelsk via Compfight cc

Source Credit: RedCross

Keep the Ribena coming.

#Lifebank

The #LifeBank hack is live on Google plus!

It's the closest we've got to being on live television, so hey : )

We're almost there, and the app will launch tomorrow. Register here to attend.

A couple of years ago, December 4, 2009, precisely, I wrote a blogpost in which I lamented a discriminatory practice in the blood donation system on the American campus where I was working then a visiting scholar. Because I was a Nigerian and for no other reason, I had been turned back from giving blood. Two years later, this time as a Masters student in the same university, I wrote a second report, acknowledging a change I noticed in the policy.

Since that first encounter, through the second one, the availability of blood (and the policies behind blood donation drives around the country) had remained on my mind as an abiding interest. So when, back in Nigeria, I was called into the founding of the One Percent Project and the Ten Thousand Donor project which both aim to make access to safe and healthy blood affordable and available through the means of information technology-driven applications, I jumped into it.

It has been fun, and enlightening, and rewarding. Since the founding of the organization in May 2012, the One Percent Project has helped facilitate the collection of about 754 pints of blood from young professionals from around the country, through the Nigerian National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS) who then give it to hospitals where they are needed, thus potentially saving about 2262 lives (since a pint of blood is reputed to be able to save about three human lives).

But that was just the beginning. Since yesterday, June 14, the best tech volunteers, programmers and hackers from around Nigeria have gathered at the Co-Creation Yaba to collaborate with the One Percent Project to create an app that can make it easier for potential donors to link up with blood donation centres around the country, and especially for patients needing blood to connect with willing donors who have signed up to be called whenever the situation arises.

I will be part of the event, tweeting nuggets, pictures, and thoughts via my twitter feed@baroka. At 4pm on Sunday, at the Audax Solutions Office (at Plot 24, Block 113, Adebisi Ogunniyi Crescent, Lekki Phase 1, Lagos‎), the app, called the LifeBank App, will be publicly launched. There will be bloggers, social media personalities, print media practitioners, and other trustees present.

If you can make it, it would be nice to see you there too. Please register to attend here. It would be nice to introduce you to the advances this new generation of Nigerian youths are making to make the future much better than the present.

The LifeApp Facebook page has been set up, as well as a twitter page. Conversations on the hackaton and the app launch will be on twitter under the hashtags #hack4health and #LifeBank.

Kola Tubosun.

#lifebank #hack4health #Co-Creation Hub

Things you should know about blood donation...

#lifebank #hack4health #giveblood

We're getting there...

#lifebank #hack4health #hackathon

My First Hackathon

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be part of a hackathon. The closest thing I had to relate it with was meetings. I don’t like meetings much. I think they are a huge scam. But that’s a post for another day.

Back to hackathons. A little while back, Oo asked if I’d be interested in something awesome (cos face it, few things are as great as the convergence of technology and health). I was still contemplating till he said there would be pizza and beer. Who told him my Achilles’ heel?

Our mission is simple: In one weekend, gather a couple of people and build an app that makes it easy to donate blood in Nigeria. (See what I meant by awesome?)

Starting on World Blood Donor Day 2013 (June 14), we locked ourselves up in a top secret chamber in Lagos, Nigeria. We’ll be there till Sunday (June 16) when we would have figured out how to make LifeBank work; just in time for the launch that same Sunday at 4pm.

Ever wondered how to save a life? We’re building an app for that. You should try it when we are done.

Tolu Agunbiade

#lifebank #Tolu Agunbiade #Oo Nwoye #giveblood

Lagos, Nigeria: When Tech Met Health

Co-Creation Hub, Lagos. #Hack4Health, Day 2.

It was when I got the 10th Blackberry broadcast informing me that someone needed blood somewhere in the country that I thought “there should be an app for this”. I wondered if it would be possible to map blood types by location. I wrote the url “BloodBank.org.ng” on my Whiteboard and left it like that.

About a year later, while playing around on LinkedIn, I came across Iyinoluwa’s profile and I saw he was an adviser to something called OnePercentProject.org. I checked it out and discovered they were about getting Nigerians to become blood donors. How cool!

I reached out to Temie, the founder of One Percent project and we decided to try and build the app. In a weekend. As someone that can write absolutely no line of code, I called for help. I reached out to some of the best chaps and ladies in the game; Seyi, Ope, Tolu, Namzo, Clive, Stanley, Mark, Victor, Kene, Onyeka, Chiedu, Saze, Banks.

We decided to build the app in 3 days over a weekend. We started building LifeBank today yesterday, which is was world blood donor day. We plan to present it at a small get together on sunday (yes beer go dey).

Special thanks to HelloFood (for the food dohhhh!), CCHUB for an amazing place to work from, Audax for the great venue on Sunday and ezWash for coupons to give those that register.

We are counting on your support once we go live.

Oo.

Culled from Oo's blog