Islamabad : After India and Bangladesh, social networking giant Facebook has rolled out a new feature in Pakistan, too, to help increase blood donations.
Launched in collaboration with the Safe Blood Transfusion Programme (SBTP), Pakistan, to address the safe blood shortages in the country, the feature encourages the Facebook users to sign up as donors and help them connect with both those in need of blood and blood centres.
Pakistan is among the countries facing an acute shortage of safe blood.
In some cases, patients and their families have to find donors to replace the blood they receive from blood banks or hospitals. Many of them reach out to the Facebook networks with blood donation requests. Now, Facebook has stepped in to bring blood donors, people and organisations together in the country by replicating a feature, which has been used by around seven million people in India and Bangladesh for blood donation since its launch last year.
Under the initiative, the first of its kind in Pakistan, 35 million Pakistani Facebook users get a message in the News Feed encouraging them to sign up as blood donors. They’re asked to share their blood group and inform if they have donated blood before.
And those needing blood can create a special post containing information like blood group required, hospitals name and phone numbers. Though all information will stay private, the people can share their donor status online. The feature will be available on Android, iOS, and desktop.
Facebook Manager (Strategic Product Partnerships) Sarim Aziz and Product Manager (Health) Hema Budaraju held brainstorming sessions with SBTP National Coordinator Prof Hasan Abbas Zaheer and crystallised the plans for the initiative.
According to Prof Hasan, he and other SBTP members are much excited about working with Facebook team to reach out to the millions of potential blood donors in the country.
“Facebook is the most sought-after social networking tool for Pakistanis to locate blood donors in their vicinity. There are thousands of people, who are part of such blood donation groups on Facebook. The Pakistan-specific blood donation feature on Facebook will allow potential donors and blood centres to get connected in a coordinated manner,” he told ‘The News’.
The SBTP national coordinator said the programme had shared with Facebook a list of 50 reputable and donor-friendly blood centres functioning across the country.
“This list will be included in the Pakistan FB Feature. The blood centres will be encouraged to develop their web pages and get connected with the feature. The potential donor will register on the feature and find out the location of the nearest recommended blood centre,” he said.
According to Prof Hasan, the donors will be encouraged to donate blood on their convenience and without waiting for an emergency to occur as all blood centres require a certain number of donations every day to meet the routine and emergency needs. Upon visiting the blood centre, the FB webpage of the blood centre will identify the pre-registered donor and enter his or her donation in the feature. The FB feature will thus not only record the number of registered donors but also provide information about how many of them actually translated their commitment into action (blood donation) and how frequently. The impact assessment of the FB Feature will thus be generated in real time simultaneously.
“The success of this FB feature can redefine the voluntary blood donation scenario in Pakistan in the most cost-effective manner. It will also compliment the national efforts to promote blood safety being implemented through the German government-funded Safe Blood Transfusion Project, which is developing a nationwide network of modern regional blood centres,” he said. The SBTP national coordinator said with a mean age of 22 years, Pakistan had a very large population of youths, mostly Facebook users, but the proper tapping of that tremendous resource for blood donation had been a programmatic gap.
He, however, said he was confident that with the help of the blood donation feature, the gap would soon become history.
Facebook Product Manager (Health) Hema Budaraju said her organisation hoped that blood donation could be made easier by increasing awareness and providing tools for people and organisations in need to connect with those willing to help.
