Understanding urgent blood-donor mobilisability: a cross-sectional online survey of digitally reachable adults in Ghana
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Introduction
Safe and timely blood availability remains a major global health challenge, especially in low- and middle-income countries. Digital tools may accelerate donor contact, but digital reachability alone does not ensure that people will notice, trust and act on urgent requests to support blood donation efforts. We examined factors associated with anticipated engagement in digitally coordinated urgent blood-donor mobilisation among digitally reachable adults in Ghana.
Methods
We conducted a cross-sectional online survey from September 2025 to January 2026 across Ghana’s 16 regions. Participants were recruited via Facebook advertising and snowball sampling. Factors associated with urgent blood-donor mobilisability were assessed under four criteria: high future-donation willingness; high willingness to install a trusted donation app; high willingness to respond to a trusted urgent-request; and high practical flexibility to leave current activities. Descriptive analyses and multivariable logistic regression examined prevalence and associated factors.
Results
Among 1,067 participants, 577 (54.1%) met all four criteria. Future-donation willingness (91.8%), trusted-app installation willingness (83.2%) and trusted-request response willingness (82.7%) were common, whereas practical flexibility was lower (66.6%). In the adjusted model, high formal health-system trust (adjusted OR (AOR) 3.95, 95% CI 2.08–7.50), high digital-response readiness (AOR 2.26, 1.66–3.08), previous donation (AOR 1.47, 1.08–2.01), high donation knowledge (AOR 1.42, 1.03–1.97) and willingness to donate to strangers were positively associated with high mobilisability. Women (AOR 0.60, 0.43– 0.83), participants reporting a work-schedule barrier (AOR 0.43, 0.29–0.66) and those travelling over 30 min to the nearest healthcare facility at night (AOR 0.66, 0.45–0.96) had lower adjusted odds.
Conclusions
Digital reachability and stated donation willingness may overestimate the population pool available for emergency donation. Digital blood-donor solutions should consider verifiable health-system requests, account for response readiness and current availability, and connect willing individuals with accessible collection options and transport support where needed.
SUMMARY BOX
What is already known on this topic
Existing digital blood-donation research has mainly focused on higher-income settings, and examined general donation willingness, app acceptance, donor recruitment and routine donor retention, with limited evidence on whether digitally reachable individuals can act promptly during urgent blood shortages in low-middle-income context.
What this study adds
This study introduces digital urgent blood-donor mobilisability as a multi-stage concept that distinguishes potential donors as being merely digitally reachable to capacity to act upon an urgent request in the context of low-middle-income countries. It shows why donation intention and app acceptability are incomplete indicators unless practical flexibility and barriers to action are also considered.
How this study might affect research, practice, or policy
Research and policy should evaluate the full mobilisation pathway, rather than uptake of digital solutions such as apps or messaging, or stated general donation willingness alone. Blood services should design urgent mobilisation around verifiable requests from trusted health-system sources, alongside real-time availability checks, accessible collection options and transport support for digitally ready people who may still face practical constraints.
