Blood component donations stifled

A local government survey has found that less than 11 percent of blood donors are willing to donate blood components, the Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau said Monday.

The bureau, which polled about 1,000 residents aged 18 to 55 for the survey, found that 10.7 percent of respondents said they were willing to give blood components, which include red blood cells and platelets. The situation has challenged local authorities' ability to collect enough blood components to meet the needs of cancer patients.

The figure is on par with donor sentiment in 2009, when less than 10 percent of blood donors chose to give blood components, according to a report in the Shanghai Morning Post. Some donors worried that donating blood components, which requires their blood to be run through a machine before being transferred back into their body, might leave them vulnerable to blood-born infections such as HIV if the machine was contaminated.

The actual risk to blood component donors is tiny, said Meng Yan, a press officer with the Shanghai Blood Center. "There isn't much chance that a donor can get infected by giving blood components because the medical equipment involved in the transfusion process is disposable. It is just as safe as donating whole blood," Meng told the Global Times.

Donation centers screen potential donors to see whether they are fit to donate blood components. "Only 50 percent of undergraduate students from a recent round of donations qualified," Meng said.

About 20,000 units of blood components were collected in Shanghai last year, falling short of the 30,000 units required to meet the annual needs of leukemia and cancer patients, Meng said. The donations are used to treat patients who suffer from low counts of certain blood components, such as platelets.

A patient would have to receive blood from more than 12 individuals to get the necessary amount of platelets through ordinary blood transfusions, Meng said.

About 43 percent of respondents said that they have never heard of donating blood components or have no preference in donating blood components over donating whole blood, according to the bureau's survey. About 44 of respondents said that they preferred to donate whole blood.