Voluntary Blood Donation Practices and Associated Factors among Regular Undergraduate Madawalabu University Students, Southeast Ethiopia: A Facilitybased Cross Sectional Study

Background: Blood transfusion is a life-saving intervention that is the process of receiving blood products and used in a variety of medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood. It has an essential role in patient management within health care systems. Up to 150 000 pregnancy-related deaths could be avoided worldwide each year through access to safe blood. Of the estimated 80 million units of blood donated annually worldwide, only 38% are collected in the developing world where 82% of the world’s population lives. There is no substitute for blood. Only blood donors can maintain an adequate supply of blood to save the lives of those who need it. However, a very large proportion of potentially eligible population were present, they do not actively donate blood. Objectives: This study was assessed the practice of voluntary blood donation and associated factors among Madawalabu University Students, Southeast Ethiopia. Methods: Institution-based cross-sectional study design was conducted in May 1-15, 2015 among 634. Ten college/schools/institute were stratified into health and non-health. Six non health schools randomly selected and the Health College taken as it is. Self- administered structured questionnaires were used to collect the data. Data was checked for their completeness, enter in to Epidata version 3.1, and export to SPSS version 21 for analysis. Descriptive analysis was used to determine the prevalence. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were employed to identify associated factors by considering p-value of less than 0.05 as significant. The results were presented in a narrative forms, tables and graphs. Results: From 634 sampled students, 609 students participated in the study with a response rate of 96.1%. From the total respondents, 18.4% (112) had ever donated blood in their life. Twenty-five (22.3%) of the donors donated the blood two and above times. From those had ever donated blood, 70.5% (79) of them were voluntarily donated. Conclusions: Though, the university students are in the range of age of huge pool for blood donation, proportion of students have ever donated blood are low. Age, year of study, willingness to donate in the future, had feared to donate blood, willingness to encourage relatives to donate, and attitude toward voluntary blood donation were the predictor variables for voluntary blood donation. Madawalabu University in collaboration of zonal blood bank should work to increase the knowledge level of university students on voluntary blood donation.