New Facebook feature on blood donations soon

Islamabad: After unveiling a tool in February this year, which allowed Pakistanis to sign up to be blood donors, the Facebook, a popular social networking website, is set to introduce a new capability to let its users in the country find blood donation opportunities nearby.

The ‘Blood Donations on Facebook’ feature will become available on May 15. According to Prof H A Zaheer, who is the pioneer of the German government funded Safe Blood Transfusion Project in the country, Facebook had launched a special feature in India and Bangladesh last year to promote voluntary blood donations. And on Feb 27, 2018, a similar feature was introduced in Pakistan to link the people needing blood with donors.

"So far more than eight million blood donors have registered themselves on the Facebook Feature in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh," he told 'The News'. Prof H A Zaheer said during the last two months, the Safe Blood Transfusion Programme and Facebook had coordinated closely and had come up with a new modified version of the Facebook feature to be launched on May 15, 2018.

"This new Facebook feature is fully consistent with the national strategy and the international recommendations. It will aim to directly link the people want to donate blood with the blood centres and blood donor organisations. This feature will also include the locations and contact details of the partner Blood Centres and the blood donor organisations to facilitate the donors to access centres in their vicinity," he said.

Prof H A Zaheer said his programme was striving to promote the culture of voluntary blood donations in Pakistan. He said since its launch in 2010, the SBTP had strived to lay the foundations of voluntary blood donations in Pakistan. Among these efforts were the development of the National Blood Donor Policy, increasing and participatory celebrations of the World Blood Donor Day, regular seminars and capacity building workshops all over the country, development of promotional material and message dissemination through website, e-newsletters, annual reports and print, electronic and social media.

The National Blood Policy recommends the conversion of family replacement donors to regular voluntary donors and strengthening of the blood donor organisations in addition to creating a general awareness among masses about blood safety and the significance of voluntary blood donation in it.

Prof H A Zaheer said the SBTP was developing a nationwide network of new infrastructure of blood transfusion funded by the German Development Bank, KFW. "The network includes the establishment of 10 modern regional blood centres and up-gradation of 60 existing hospital blood banks. This new infrastructure has now become operational and will be the biggest beneficiary of the new partnership between the SBTP and Facebook since reliance on voluntary blood donations is the key to the success of the blood transfusion reforms process," he said.

Meanwhile, the SBTP and Facebook jointly organised a workshop here on the new Pakistan-specific feature meant to promote voluntary blood donations in the country. The participants included the representatives of blood banks and university-based blood donor organisations from Islamabad and Rawalpindi.

The workshop included a technical session in which the Facebook team briefed about the details of the new Feature and how to use it. The Facebook experts also made demonstrations on how to create a Facebook page through which a blood bank or a BDO can connect to the Facebook registered blood donors. Earlier, the SBTP team briefed participants on the status of voluntary blood donations at the global and national levels and the SBTP achievements on the implementation of the blood safety systems reforms in Pakistan.

A similar meeting will now be organised in Lahore for the benefit of the local stakeholders. Based on that experience, the SBTP will organise such meetings in other cities and try to institutionalise the use of the Facebook Feature for the promotion of regular voluntary blood donations in Pakistan.