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Who are we?
T-REC is an international consortium of academics and health practitioners who want to improve blood transfusion services across Africa. T-REC is a four year, EU funded project working in Ghana and Zimbabwe.
“Blood transfusion it is a hugely important issue for all health services and it is very expensive so we have to get it right. It is neglected in terms of having evidence based practice.”
Imelda Bates, Project Leader, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
How do we aim to improve blood transfusion services?
T-REC works to improve African research capacity that will meet local health needs. We do this in three main ways: through funding and supervising three Ghanaian and Zimbabwean PhD students to research blood transfusion services in their countries. T-REC also provides small bursaries to 60 local graduate and postgraduate students in medicine, science, social sciences and media to focus on blood transfusion as an area of study. Finally, we support 42 local blood transfusion staff to undertake a Professional Diploma in Project Design and Management (DPDM). This means providing training for a one-year, in-post research project to improve transfusion services to meet the needs of the local population.
What do we hope we will achieve?
T-REC aims to integrate research into the mainstream activities of blood transfusion organisations. We hope to strengthen research systems, infrastructure and networks within and between blood transfusion services and academic institutions in Africa and internationally.
“I hope T-REC will give researchers an opportunity to be well trained, to give them state of the art experiences in training and research and help us improve our knowledge about blood transfusion locally.”
Dr Shirley Owusu-Ofori, Ghana Blood Transfusion Service, Kumasi, Ghana
T-REC hopes that transfusion policy makers, service managers and researchers will work together to identify future research needs and develop research strategies. We also want to ensure that local researchers generate evidence that gets translated into guidelines and practice at policy levels.
We will share lessons and outputs from the project with an extensive range of individuals, networks and organisations including research funders, decision-makers, WHO, media, developing country governments, NGOS and civil society organisations.