As demand for blood goes up, donations go down

(Ecns.cn)--Repeated calls for blood donations have been made online this month as the nation grapples with severe blood shortages, reports the Southern Weekly.

One of them happened on June 12, when Meng Hua, a surgeon at Shengjing Hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning Province, sent out an "SOS" on his microblog appealing to the public to save a child with a rare hematologic disorder.

As early as June 7, Dai Zhaoliu, a director at the same hospital, had declared that "big surgical operations must be suspended today due to a blood shortage."

Such a problem hadn't occurred for over two decades, Dai told reporters from the Southern Weekly.

Beijing is also struggling. Statistics from the capital's Red Cross Blood Center show that the city urgently needs donations of all types of blood (excluding type A).

Chen Zhiyun, a 34-year-old Beijing resident, narrowly survived a recent car accident thanks to an immediate transfusion of 4,000 milliliters. Chen was lucky; the procedure nearly wiped out the blood center's supply.

Similar difficulties have also been spotted in other cities, including Chongqing, Huai'an in Jiangsu Province and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province.

"In the past, blood shortages were either seasonal or occurred for a certain blood type. Now, the situation is getting more and more serious," an official at the Ministry of Health told the Southern Weekly.

Experts worry that the Twelfth Five-Year Plan Period might witness a surge of patients needing blood transfusions, and if the situation is not improved, people's lives could be in danger.

Yang Jian, vice head of the Yantai Blood Center in Shandong Province, says demand for blood started to increase sharply in 2010. Before that, the reserve had always been sufficient, with donations growing by 10-15 percent each year from 1998 to 2007.

Data from the Health Ministry reveal that in 2011, donations declined steeply in Beijing, Zhejiang, Hainan and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The average growth rate from January to September was a mere 5.8 percent, half that of the same period in 2010.

The ministry says blood donors take up only 0.9 percent of the Chinese population. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), at least 1 to 3 percent of the population should donate to meet a nation's basic demand for clinical blood.

"The severe shortage has been caused by the government's healthcare reforms since 2009," points out an industry insider. Now, more patients can afford medical treatments such as liver transplants, which require 9,000 milliliters of red blood cells – that's equivalent to blood donations by about 45 people.

Fu Yongshui, director of the Guangzhou Blood Center, says cities like Beijing and Shanghai are more vulnerable to shortages because their advanced medical skills and equipment attract more patients.

According to an online survey by Southern Weekly and sohu.com, fears of dangerous blood drawing (34.4 percent) and opaque donation/use practices (55.75 percent) are the two major reasons for the public's unwillingness to donate.

"I'm worried about the safety of the needles and the general sanitation," Zhan Nana, a 24-year-old college student, told the Global Times.

Others wonder why there is no payment for providing blood, while transfusions are so expensive to get.

Lang Xianping, a prominent economist, suspects the Red Cross Society of China of profiting from donated blood by selling it to hospitals at a high price.

Moreover, according to the People's Daily, the current blood donation mechanism is still separate from the medical insurance system in China, which makes it difficult for donors to get refunds for using blood themselves.

To tackle shortages, blood centers in many provinces are using microblogging services to ensure real-time communication for blood collection and supplies, reports Xinhua News Agency.

"Blood centers in different cities and counties post their demand and supplies online every day, so that surplus blood can be redistributed to needy places faster," said Li Yongming, an official with the Gansu provincial blood center.

"It's important to raise public awareness of the issue, particularly among young and well-educated people," he added.

Li also told Xinhua that Inner Mongolia's regional blood center opens to the public every Thursday, showing how blood is collected, tested and stored to ensure safety.

"But very few people come," he said.