"Dogara, we have some patients who are in dire need of blood. Can you help?"

The voice was Arnold, who manages the lab at the MSF hospital in Ngala, Nigeria. Back in 2017, we had just opened the blood bank, but hadn’t yet begun to raise awareness in the community of the importance of blood donations.

Ngala is in northeast Nigeria. It’s an agricultural area that’s also home to about 70,000 displaced people who have had to escape armed violence in their hometowns. We’re in Borno state, a region which has experienced more than a decade of insecurity.

When MSF first arrived here 2016, most people hadn’t had much access to medical care before, and instead relied on traditional medicines. They were understandably unsure about coming to MSF’s new facility.

As a health promotion team, we have worked hard to build trust, and people have started coming to the hospital more and more. The number of preventable deaths in the community has reduced. We have worked with communities to raise awareness about the importance of vaccinations for their children, and of mothers coming to give birth here.

Blood donation, however, was a very big challenge. Donated blood can be life-saving for all kinds of patients – women with childbirth complications, gunshot victims, even patients with severe malaria. But back then, with no blood donors, if a patient needed even a pint, the situation became very, very serious.

We knew we needed to do something. People just weren’t familiar with the idea. We were very careful – blood is a sensitive topic for some cultures here, so it’s not something we went to the market square with our megaphones and shouted about.

Read the full article about health promotion by Dogara Yohana at Doctors Without Borders.