Inadequate and maldistribution of critical personnel for blood transfusion services, a potential threat to blood safety in Nigeria: a multicenter cooperative study.

Background: The safety of blood depends on the training and experience of personnel responsible for its processing, especially in low-resource settings where an ineffective environment poses a challenge to the provision of safe blood. The study aimed to conduct an audit of personnel involved in blood transfusion services in all Tertiary Hospitals (THs) in Nigeria. Method: Electronic-based (Google Form) cross-sectional study was conducted between October 2019 and June 2020. Data was analysed with SPSS (version 21.0). Main Result: Most of the THs had medical laboratory scientist 48 (96.00%) [Mean ± SD (8.10 ± 7.40) and Sum (337.00)] and majority had Haematologist 30 (60.00%) [Mean ± SD (3.60 ± 2.45) and Sum (144.00)] but only 14 (28.00%) [Mean ± SD (1.54 ± 0.66) and Sum (21.00)] had Nurses and 21 (42.00%) [Mean ± SD (3.05 ± 2.17) and Sum (65.00)] had blood donor recruiters. The South-West (SW) had the highest manpower, at 250 (29.34%), and the North-East (NE) had the least, at 60 (7.04%). Out of the 21 Nurses, SW had 7 (33.33%), whereas NE had 0 (0.00%). Among the 65 donor recruiters, SW had 16 (24.62%), whereas NE had 8 (12.31%). Conclusion: The bulk of transfusion manpower was made up of medical laboratory scientists, with a gross shortage of nurses and blood donor recruiters. There is a maldistribution of the manpower that forms the linkage between altruistic donors and the system. These findings call for urgent recruitment/redeployment and training of nurses in transfusion services and eventual deployment of resources for training of specialists in transfusion medicine.