Facebook Launches Blood Donation Feature

With the increasing demand for blood donation in the United States, Facebook on Tuesday formally launched a blood donation feature.

Through this feature, Facebook plans to tap especially millennials and younger people who spend an average of three hours a day on the social media platform and who constitute though a meagre part of the 3 percent donors in the country.

With this feature, now Facebook users can sign up as blood donors in the ‘about’ section of their respective profiles and get options such as to find a blood bank, set a reminder and see requests from banks, hospitals and potential recipients.

In the United States, every two minutes someone or other needs blood and a donor can thus potentially save three lives. As a pilot project, the feature had mopped up 35 million donors in the past year in several countries including India.

The product director for health at Facebook, Hema Budaraju said that Facebook has tied up with America’s Blood Centers, American Red Cross, New York Blood Center, Inova, Stanford Blood Center, Rock River Valley Blood Center, Versiti and Vitalant for the timely solution.

The blood donation feature will now work in Chicago, New York City, Washington DC, San Francisco Bay Area and Baltimore but will go countrywide in the coming months and then the feature will be available for the rest of the world in coming years.

Vitalant, a blood donation partner with Facebook, says there is a fear of donation. Mitzy Edgecomb, Vice President of Vitalant says, “Most of the donors in the US are above 60 years; for youngsters, it’s a no-go area. Perhaps this new Facebook product will make a remarkable difference”.

On the other hand, America’s Blood Centers CEO Kate Fry says organisations like hers now have to look for a diverse pool of blood donors since Americans, especially the youngsters, do not come forward to donate blood. She says, “Nobody asked me to’ is the common refrain”, she notes.

While Facebook’s Hema Budaraju says, “In India, where the feature was launched one-and-a-half years ago as a pilot projects. In Delhi and Karnataka, where the governments adopted it, the feature has helped several people donate and receive safe blood”.

With the World Blood Donor Day coming up this Friday, 14th June many feels such social media initiatives can quietly and quickly change the scenario across the world, including India.