5. Conclusions
Over the past fifteen years, Mauritius has made commendable efforts to ensure the availability and accessibility of safe and quality blood and blood products. Indeed, with the good will and commitment from its government and policy makers, reasonably safe blood can be a reality in the African context. The NBTS has overcome many challenges in terms of voluntary low-risk blood donors, quality blood testing, quality service delivery of blood for transfused patients nationwide, and specialized service delivery in antenatal serology, tissue typing, special investigations, and reagent preparation. Although Mauritius has made progress in addressing blood safety issues, some challenges still remain and include the lack of transfusion legislation, a weak national regulatory system for blood and blood products, no production cost per unit of blood intended for transfusion, and a weak clinical interface for transfusion.
These challenges call for concrete and appropriate actions such as (i) strengthening of the legal framework through the enactment of transfusion legislation and the establishment of a national regulatory system for blood and blood products; (ii) conducting a costing study as a management tool for monitoring NBTS costs; (iii) setting up an appropriate mechanism for data collection and information management in NBTS; (iv) enhancing the establishment of HTCs and other mechanisms for reporting adverse reactions and linkage between hospitals and blood transfusion centres; and (v) contracting fractionation into PDMP with plasma fractionators in order to meet national demand for these products given the high quality of the plasma produced.
