Objectives: Helping one-time donors to become regular ones is crucial to maintain a country’s blood supply. Our aim was to assess general attitudes, effects of blood donation campaigns, intent of reappearance, factors influencing reappearance and reasons for absence among blood donors.

Methods: A cross-sectional, quantitative research was performed in Pécs, Hungary between 2019.10.01-2020.02.28. The non-random target group selected by the convenience sampling technique consisted of blood donors who had been absent for at least one year (N=102). Those who only donated blood to gain the required certificate for plasmapheresis, did not fill at least 70% of the questionnaire or were not fit for blood donation as per the “MoH” decree, were all excluded. An anonymous, self-administered questionnaire with 48 questions about socio-demographic data, blood donation sites, experience, level of knowledge, attitude, motivation, blood donation campaigns, reasons for absence were used for data collection. We calculated Chi square test and T-test (p<0.05) with MS Excel and IBM SPSS 25.0 software.

Results: Mean age of respondents were 37±6.62 years (min=20; max=45). A significant connection was found between the feeling of weakness and the chance of another donation later on (p=0.007), as well as personal invitation and future intention of donation (p=0.009). Main reason of absence was due to their health status or lack of time.

Conclusions: Our study finds that occasionally returning and intermittently absent blood donors should be made regular blood donors as this will make the blood supply system predictable and sustainable. In this complex process, all parties, methods, and tools have a specific and prominent role.