Winners

Koga Luhulla is a medical specialist and hematologist at Muhimbili National Hospital (MNH), where she serves as the Head of the Blood Transfusion Unit. She has held this leadership position since 2022. MNH is Tanzania's national tertiary referral hospital and handles more than 25,000 blood transfusion each year. In this demanding setting, Koga plays a central role in coordinating transfusion services for a wide range of clinical departments. Since assuming leadership, one of her major achievements has been improving blood availability at MNH. Through strong collaboration with the National Blood Transfusion Service across multiple regions. As a lower-middle-income country institution, MNH faces ongoing challenges related to funding for transfusion services.

Passionate about translating transfusion medicine-related research into evidenced-based practice. Moreover as transfusion medicine specialist, inquisitive about developing context-based protocols in clinical transfusion and global blood safety programmes for the community. This drive led Steve to join the Quality Management and Global Blood Safety working parties of the ISBT. Moreover, Steve was selected as a Harold Gunson Fellow at the ISBT congress of 2021 and was an “ I TRY IT” 2023 mentee.

Post his MD degree as valedictorian, he obtained a scholarship to specialize in transfusion medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Currently, he serves a transfusion medicine specialist and head of blood transfusion services for the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services (CBCHS) with over 5000 staff. He oversees the improvement of its quality management system via bridging the gap between demand and supply of blood, ensuring GMP of blood components, appropriate use of clinical blood, hemovigilance, training and education of the healthcare staff involved in transfusion etc while working towards international accreditation such as that of the African Society for Blood Transfusion.

His passion in PDMPs further led him to join the Global Blood Supply WP of the ISBT where he takes part in activities of the Safe Plasma Proteins subgroup. Furthermore, he was one of the few Harold Gunson Fellows in 2021, presented a couple of scientific research at the ISBT congresses and is an I TRY IT Mentee 2023. In addition, merging digital technology and transfusion medicine led to the birth of the social venture, Blood Track (www.bloodtrack.cm), which he coordinates.

His aspiration to contribute in the transfusion medicine world at a bigger scale, spurred him to enroll in the Management in Transfusion Medicine Program (MBA in transfusion medicine) offered by the University of Groningen in partnership with Sanquin.