Daily Times

More than 1 million (m) donors have signed up to donate blood in Pakistan using Facebook’s feature of blood donations since the launch in March this year, according to the official data of Facebook.

Facebook launched Blood Donations in Pakistan earlier this year to help make safe blood more accessible in Pakistan to all licensed blood banks and hospitals. With the blood donations tool, people can sign up to be blood donors on Facebook and get notified when people, blood banks, and hospitals near them need blood. It has an ongoing partnership with SBTP (Safe Blood Authority) to train blood banks on how to find volunteers donors through Facebook.

“Connecting people in meaningful ways is incredibly important to us. Pakistan, like many countries, has a shortage of safe blood,” said Simon Milner, the vice president of public policy in Facebook Asia Pacific. “In some cases, this shortage means patients and their families are responsible for finding donors to replace the blood they receive from blood banks or hospitals. This is where Facebook can help, by finding ways to more efficiently bring blood donors, people and organizations together,” said the vice president. ” Our research suggests that when people have better information and tools, they’re more willing to donate blood and it’s easier for people who need blood to find donors. We hope this product continues to help people come together in ways that weren’t possible before, and makes it easier for people and organizations in Pakistan to give and receive blood,” explained Milner.

As part of his week-long trip to Pakistan, Simon Milner and his team visited the Jamila Sultana Foundation Blood Bank in Islamabad on Wednesday. More than 25 percent of walk-in donors at the Jamila Sultana Foundation have come from Facebook.

“It was a pleasure and honour to have Mr Simon Milner, visit Jamila Sultana Foundation to help raise awareness of the rising challenge of thalassemia in Pakistan which affects over 100,000 patients every year and this number is increasing due to millions of carriers and lack of awareness,” said Jamila Sultana Foundation project director Tauqir Abbas. “Only prevention can help deal with this disease and Facebook has been an effective tool for us to help raise awareness and to increase our walk-in donors using the new Facebook Blood donation feature,” he added.

Published in Daily Times, December 6^th 2018.