In Gabon, the coronavirus caused a decline in blood donations, which were already not enough to meet demand. Ntchina wants to reverse the trend and help save more lives.  

Ntchina is a digital platform that matches blood donors with recipients. The platform was first presented to the public by its developer (the eponymous Gabonese startup Ntchina) in 2021.  On Tuesday, June 14, 2022, on the sidelines of World Blood Donor Day, it was officially launched. 

Alvine Yeno, Ntchina’s founder, explained that the platform is the result of a sad experience. Indeed, one of her relatives suffering from lupus needed a blood transfusion but none of the calls for donors issued by her family yielded a result. “It was difficult finding donors. Calls for donors made on social media and to other relatives were not successful… I then asked myself what I could do to make that search more effective and help those in need. So, I started developing the project,” she explains. 

The platform has a mobile app (available on AppStore and Playstore) that allows access to all of its services. Users can either register as donors or recipients by filling in a set of information including hometown and blood type. When donors with specific blood types are available, the platform can send alerts to users who activated that option. “Our mission is to facilitate blood donation for better care to those in need, notably sick people, pregnant women, accident victims, etc,” Alvine says. 

Her startup also developed an online game to raise awareness of the importance of blood donation. Her initiative is highly important given that in Gabon, since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, blood donations have declined. Before the pandemic, authorities used to collect about 23,000 blood bags yearly. The volume was not enough to meet demand but, with the coronavirus-spurred decline, the gap between supply and demand has widened considerably. With Ntchina (which means "blood" in  Myene), the gap could be reduced and more lives saved. 

Adoni Conrad Quenum