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Blood donations by populations from the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa are a public health necessity for reasons of genetic polymorphism. This article aims to determine whether blood donors' social characteristics ? i.e. greater socio-economic integration and a strong sense of citizenship ? constitute deterrents to blood donation among foreign populations. Results show that donors from the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa are not better integrated than non-donors from the same areas. However, blood donors express a significantly greater sense of citizenship than non-donors. Donors from the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa feel a greater sense of citizenship than non-donors from the same areas. The study of blood donation in these categories of population has two major implications. In biological terms, blood donation by foreign populations constitutes a response to transfusion needs. In cultural terms, blood donation is used by populations from the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa as an active means of expressing their sense of citizenship.

Background: Ethnic-historic sources have considered the Comorian population to be the result of an amalgamation of African, Arabian and Southeast Asian groups., Aim: This study seeks to determine the genetic relationships and contributions from Sub-Saharan Africa and Indian Oceania and to reconstruct past migration events., Subjects and Methods: The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) polymorphism of a Comorian population was described and analysed., Results: Genetic distances and multidimensional scaling analyses showed complex patterns of genetic differentiation in the Indian Oceanian area as a result of continuous gene flow occurring within the past approximately 2500 years. Nevertheless, the Comorian genetic pool appears to be a mix of Bantu-speaking and Arab populations as testified to by admixture estimations of almost 50-60% and 27-33%, respectively., Conclusion: The Comorian population may represent the eastern limit of the recent and massive eastward Bantu expansion. In contrast to the population from Madagascar (Merina), only a restricted influence of Austronesian populations was found.