The effect of motivational strategy on voluntary plasma donation, a field trial

Plasma protein therapies (PPTs) are a group of medicines extracted from human plasma through fractionation. The manufacture of adequate amounts of PPTs requires a large volume of human plasma. WHO emphasized that whole blood and blood component donations should be voluntary and non-remunerated. So, motivating people to donate plasma is crucial. In this study, we evaluated the impact of social media on motivating blood donors to donate plasma without any compensation and the moderating effects of blood donation history on plasma donation.

we allocated blood donors (n = 501) to intervention and control groups randomly. Participants in the intervention group got educational and motivational messages through a WhatsApp channel. Then, we followed up all participants for six months and registered the information of the plasma donation during this period.

In the intervention group, 6.8% had returned to donate plasma, while this was 2% in the control group (p = 0.016, OR:3.59, 95%CI:1.3-9.89). Among regular blood donors in the intervention group, 17.86% had returned to donate plasma but, no regular donor returned to donate plasma in the control group (p = 0.055). In addition, 10.8% of donors who had academic education in the intervention group returned to donate plasma, although this was 2.54% in the control group (P = 0.0485).

Our findings suggest that the educational interventions have more effects on academically educated donors to motivate them to donate plasma.