Kenya’s blood shortage and the kicking of an aid addiction

Tragedy led Mariam Mwinyiusi to open a vein. Last year her friend died when she could not get a blood transfusion in time. “I can prevent it from happening to another person,” she says at a blood bank in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. Blood shortages have been a huge problem in Kenya——for years. The cost is untold suffering, mainly of . Researchers at Imperial College in London found that almost 52% of children in three east African countries admitted to hospital with severe anaemia died if they did not receive blood transfusions within eight hours. By contrast, 96% of those who got blood promptly survived.