Epidemiology of Blood Transfusion in Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Blood transfusion remains an essential practice in pediatrics, particularly in countries with a high prevalence of infectious diseases and severe anemia. This study aims to present the epidemiological profile of children transfused in hospitals in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is a retrospective, cross-sectional, multicenter study conducted on 2,097 children admitted to hospitalization between 2019 and 2021 in 5 hospitals in the DRC. We collected 753 cases who received at least one blood transfusion. The results found show that the frequency of transfusions is 35.9%. The male gender is the most represented with 53.5%. The average age is 4 years and 64.5% of transfused children are under 5 years old. Three peaks in transfusion frequency were observed, notably April-May, July and December-January. Nearly 80% of children were on their first transfusion and 5.7% had known sickle cell disease. The main indications for transfusion are malaria (76.8%), sepsis (65.9%) and anemia (62.7%). Whole blood is the blood product transfused in 65.6% of cases. Mortality among transfused children is 8.2%. The popularization of international and national standards in terms of transfusion practices, early programming of the collection of blood products according to peak needs and the establishment of blood processing means for the production of diversified blood products will help to optimize the benefit of transfusion in Congolese children.