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Search on — 5 minute read

How doctors, dispatch drivers, and blood donors are coming together to save lives across Africa

Search on — 5 minute read

How doctors, dispatch drivers, and blood donors are coming together to save lives across Africa

It’s midafternoon in Lagos, Nigeria. Population 24 million. Traffic is at its peak. No one can go anywhere.
Except Joseph Kalu. Not your typical motorbike dispatch driver, Joseph works for LifeBank, a tech company founded by Temie Giwa-Tubosun, that connects blood suppliers to hospital patients. His mission? To deliver the life-saving blood inside his cold chain transport box in less than 45 minutes.
Pulling out his phone, Joseph checks the LifeBank app, which uses the Google Maps Platform to show the routes between blood banks, doctors, and drivers across the sprawling city. He immediately sees the location of the blood bank and the hospital awaiting the delivery.
The urgency is real: If a person loses 40 percent of their blood, they can die from organ failure. Every day across Lagos, LifeBank is racing against time.

A previous version of this story was published in 2019, and has been updated to include a newly released documentary film and LifeBank's efforts to combat COVID-19 in Nigeria.

For Temie Giwa-Tubosun, access to mapping information was an important part of solving the blood crisis problem in her native Nigeria. Organizing information and making it accessible is at the heart of Google’s mission. By designing a system to connect blood banks to hospitals via Google Maps Platform, LifeBank has been able to decrease delivery time from 24 hours to less than 45 minutes.

Temi Giwa-Tubosun at the LifeBank offices.
A lot of times when someone is bleeding, they have between 20 minutes and 2 hours, so it’s not a problem you can take your time to solve.

Temie Giwa-Tubosun

In January 2016, Temie, already a leader in child and maternal health in Nigeria, officially launched LifeBank. Her goal was to find the fastest way possible for patients to receive the blood they needed. The genesis for the idea came in 2014, when Temie was pregnant with her son. At the time, she lived in Lagos, but her parents had relocated to the United States. Wanting her mom to be present for the birth, Temie traveled to be with her.

At 30 weeks into her pregnancy, Temie was rushed to the hospital for an emergency C-section. Fortunately, doctors were able to safely deliver her son, Enafie, on Valentine’s Day. “If I had my son in Lagos, I may have died from postpartum hemorrhaging,” Temie realized.

Six weeks: the shelf life for donated blood.

6 weeks

The shelf life for donated blood.

The Red Cross, 2019

Nigeria has the fourth-highest maternal mortality rate in the world, accounting for 19 percent of all maternal deaths globally. Postpartum hemorrhaging (the loss of too much blood following a birth) is the leading cause of such deaths. The lack of infrastructure to get crucial blood supplies in Nigeria compounds this problem. “When I realized this, I knew I needed to do this work, and do it fully,” Temie says. She returned to Lagos determined to find a solution.

Donated blood has a shelf life of just six weeks. Often, it expires before it is ever used because doctors are unable to locate the type of blood that they need. Temie realized that this was inherently a logistics problem: “The doctors who need the blood and the blood banks who are discarding blood needed to somehow find a way to communicate with each other.” She turned to the Google Maps Platform to create an app for these once disconnected entities. By mapping each location involved in blood distribution across Lagos – from hospitals to blood banks to the dispatch drivers – Temie was able to reduce delivery times and save more lives.

In the past, hospitals – or sometimes even patients’ family members – would call individual blood banks to see if they had the needed blood type. Response times became a matter of life or death, and overburdened doctors and distressed family members often lacked the resources necessary to find blood in time.

We’re using Google Maps to build a communication platform between blood banks, hospitals, and patients that didn’t exist before.

Temie Giwa-Tubosun

To tackle this problem, Temie created and mapped an online blood repository in partnership with 52 blood banks across Lagos. Doctors can now request a blood type and immediately access a map that tracks the journey of the delivery. With LifeBank’s model, blood is typically used within one week of being stored at a bank and wastage is all but eliminated – and supply is finally meeting demand.

Every 2 seconds someone in the United States needs blood.

Every 2 seconds

Someone in the United States needs blood.

The Red Cross, 2019

Before LifeBank, finding and delivering blood to a patient in Lagos could take several hours and in some cases, several days. LifeBank changed the game, transporting blood in a record-breaking average of 45 minutes from initial request to final delivery. As Temie puts it, “without a technology like Google Maps, we’d be in the dark."

Joseph Kalu, a LifeBank driver, carrying blood is in his cold chain transport box.
I knew donors were always going to be an important part of distribution. If you don’t have supply, what are you going to move?

Temie Giwa-Tubosun

Like in many countries around the world, mobilizing blood donation in Nigeria is a difficult task – but a vital part of the blood supply chain. In order for LifeBank to work, Temie knew she needed to increase voluntary blood donations. On LifeBank’s donor app, Nigerians can book appointments via a map of local blood banks and learn more about what to expect.

Just one donation can save up to three lives.

1 donation

Just one pint of blood can save up to three lives.

The Red Cross, 2019

I was also sick once. On the brink of death. I understand what it feels like to step in and [give blood] for people who need it. You’re giving life to someone who needs it.

Oluwaseun Adeolu LifeBank blood donor

By connecting donors to critical resources, LifeBank has registered over 5,000 blood donors. When asked how she was able to mobilize so many volunteers, Temie put it simply: “You may be surprised [by] the answer you get. It’s most likely not going to be no, particularly if you tell them why it’s so important.”

To date, LifeBank has moved over 22,000 units, served 400-plus hospitals, and saved more than 8,000 lives.

Update: Continuing their mission of connecting medical supplies to those in need, Temie and her team are now spearheading efforts in Nigeria to combat the spread of COVID-19. LifeBank is providing free oxygen treatments to patients in critical need, and has recently launched a drive-thru/walk-in COVID-19 testing center in Lagos and Ibadan, with a goal to provide a model of centralized screening across Africa. LifeBank is also working to create a national register of critical medical equipment, finding and repairing over 2,000 respirators, ventilators, and ICU beds for local hospitals. To learn more, visit LifeBank.ng.

Where can I donate blood?

Where can I donate blood?

Just one donation can save up to three lives. Find out where you can safely donate blood in your community.

Find a donation center near you

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