At the end of an ordinary meeting of the management committee under the chairmanship of Professor Tetanye Ekoe, the budget for the 2024 year was set at 756 million francs.

In order to deliver blood products efficiently, the National Blood Transfusion Centre (NBTC) wants to generate its own resources. This was the objective of a meeting of the management committee of the institution that took place by the end of last week. The budget for 2024 has been set at 765 million francs, less than the budget for 2023. Its chairman, Professor Tetanye Ekoe, explains: “we had a relatively high budget last year because we were counting on a certain amount of support that didn’t materialise. We were asked by the financial authorities to stay within the budgetary constraints”, says Professor Ekoe.

Regarding the Centre’s strategic plans, he adds: “we in need of the necessary resources to enable us to recruit and make a certain number of strategic appointments for our institution”.

As far as the proper activities of the centre are concerned, the Director of the institution, Professor Dora Ngum Shu Mbanya, points out that new laboratories will be set up: “One of the things that we are planning to do is to set up a laboratory where the blood products can be analysed. Once that is done, we can move forward. For 2024, we hope to be able to recruit staff. Without them, it is very complicated. For the NBTC underway, we need to be able to go out, raise awareness, mobilise the population to donate, collect, qualify and distribute blood. We also have to manage the administrative aspects.”