The eastern province of Jiangsu
is the latest in a long line of areas to announce that hospitals
are experiencing a shortage of blood, China Daily reported
today, apparently because less people are going out during the hot
summer days and because students are away on holiday.
According to Jiangsu Blood Center, stores of blood,
especially Type A, have fallen below recommended levels to less
than 300,000 milliliters. They should be kept at about 400,000
milliliters.
Usually, the center receives 30,000 to 40,000
milliliters of blood from donors every day, but recently this has
dropped to about 10,000 milliliters.
In a bid to top up reserves, seven blood donation
buses and a blood donation center are now open around the clock and
SMS reminders have been sent to previous Type A donors.
Teams from Nanjing’s Red Cross Blood Center are
also moving further out into the suburbs of the provincial capital
in search of donors, and some team members have succumbed to
heatstroke in the course of their duties.
"It is increasingly possible that hospitals will
have to postpone operations because there is not enough of the
blood type that they need," said Liu Qianghui, a doctor from
Jiangsu People's Hospital.
"Every summer, from July to August, there is a
shortage of blood," he said, adding that “the shortage is mainly
because college and university students are on holiday, so the
number of volunteer donors has decreased."
Since early this month, many other parts of the
country – Jiangxi,
Fujian,
Gansu
and Hunan
provinces, the cities of Chengdu and Guangzhou and the
municipalities of Shanghai
and Chongqing
– have also reported blood shortages.
(China Daily July 29, 2005)