By Chukwuma Umeorah, Lagos
The Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) has commended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for donating blood and increasing the awareness at promoting the importance of saving lives through a blood donation exercise in Lagos.
The blood donation drive which was part of the church’s All African Service Project saw an impressive turnout of volunteers, both from within its congregation and from the local community bolstering LUTH’s blood bank reserves and ensuring increased supply of blood for patients in critical need.
A resident doctor in the department of Haematology and Blood Transfusion at LUTH, Ogunaike-Quaye Temitope, while commending the church for the exemplary steps at saving lives noted that, “Every pint of blood being donated here would save at least three lives. The relevance of this exercise is inestimable, this is because the awareness and mental attitude of Nigerians towards voluntary blood donation is poor. Hence the demand for blood cannot be quantified.
“Many preventable deaths occur in hospitals because of lack of blood. The blood gotten from this donation exercise would go a long way to saving many lives.”
The Director of Communication of the Church, Ikpe Nkanang, said the initiative in partnership with states, local governments and other faith-based organizations was targeted at giving back to society, especially the less privileged.
“This is an opportunity for the church to give back to the society following the injunction of our Lord Jesus to serve one another, because by so doing, we are in the service of God. We are having various events in different locations. In Lagos, we are having blood donations, we have some health centres being renovated while some other of our church members are working in various markets across the state.
Our interventions every year depend on the need of our host communities. We are partnering with many other religious bodies, Christians and Muslims to come together in love to serve the community.”
Highlighting the impact of the project across the nation, Nkenang said, “If we have over 500,000 of our members put in at least three hours of work, you can quantify that and see the value of service is provided.”
On his part, the First Counsellor, Yaba Stake Presidency, Anyin Alfred said that the exercise which involved over 200 donors from across five units of their stake would also help dispel myths about blood donation while seeking God’s blessings.
“This would also dispel the misconception about blood donation as we are also educating the people through this exercise on the relevance of donating blood to save lives. At difficult times such as this, we should learn to show love to one another.”
Raymond Oregbu, one of the donors, excited at the opportunity said that the benefits are far reaching as it would also help the donor by letting the body regenerate fresh blood to improve immunity against diseases.
