China faces severe plasma shortage
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China.org.cn, December 12, 2011
Health minister Chen Zhu called on the public to join blood donation on Sunday since China is facing severe challenges in collecting enough blood plasma to produce medicines.
This is the fifth time for Chen to make the call after he took office in 2007. He donated blood in late October 2010 to call on the public to do the same.
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Health minister Chen Zhu called on the public to join blood donation. |
Blood plasma is needed to make blood products like prothrombin complex which is vital for hemophiliacs.
The total volume of blood plasma collected last year was 4,180 tonnes, while the volume needed to produce enough medicines was 8,000 tonnes, said a statement from the ministry. The situation became even worse this year.
Although the amount of blood donated at the national level has increased for years, Beijing and Zhejiang province both reported declines this year.
Official statistics show that donations in the past six months dropped 7.31 percent in the Chinese capital over the same period last year, after years of continuous growth.
The shrinkage happened partly because of the public's mistrust of the country's Red Cross branches after a series of embezzlement scandals and contamination triggered HIV infection scandals, said Liu Jiang, director of the Beijing Red Cross Blood Center.
In an overhaul of plasma collection services in 2004, the ministry closed 262 donation centers, leaving only 138 in operation, resulting in the plasma donations falling at least one-third from 5,000 tonnes in 2003.
Blood plasma are currently collected at 144 designed stations across the mainland. The stations, as requested by law, are all owned by major manufacturers of blood products.
Previous reports indicated that the main source of donated blood in China was still organized college students and migrant workers, which accounted for 60 percent of total donors.
Chen promised to encourage qualified drug makers to set up more collection stations in the next five years.
(Xinhua News Agency contributed to the story)
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