Facebook to add new feature to locate blood donors in India 

To help find blood in India, the social networking giant is adding new option to sign up as blood donors starting from Sunday, which is National Blood Donor Day. There is a shortage of safe blood in India, and sometimes patients and families needing blood will reach out on social media networks to locate donors.

“It can be hard to find a donor or donate to someone outside your network. So we worked with non-profit organizations, blood banks, and donors to build a tool to make it easier to give blood.Donors can register on Facebook and get a notification if a person or an organization nearby needs blood, and people who need donations can be connected to potential donors,“ Founder and CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his FB timeline.

''The idea has been done by one of the companys' product manager Hema Budaraju, for whom the issue is personal. People are always willing to help, they just need the tools and information to do so," he added.

In India, there are not enough people donating to meet the demand of people who need it. People keep posting on Facebook. From Sunday, Facebook will begin showing a message in the News Feed prompting users to sign up as blood donors. The information will remain private and set to “only me” by default, though users can share their donor status on their profile if they wish. The feature will roll out on Android and the mobile web first, as they’re the most popular platforms in India, Facebook noted.

The best thing about this feature is its privacy. In case, donor wants to share his/her post, can do it on their timeline. The feature will first available on Android phones.

“This feature allows the recipients to create a post with all the information about which donors need to know so that they can contact easily,” added Budaraju.

When any posts inquiring about blood are posted, Facebook will automatically notify all the donors which will be available nearby so that can connect to needy.

Blood requirements in India

Every year, India requires about four crore units of blood out of which only 40 lakh units of blood are available, according to a report by Pune University.

More than 38,000 blood donations are needed every day and a total of 30 million components are transferred each year.

In 2016-17 alone, over 6.57 lakh units of blood and its products were discarded. The saddest part is that 50% of the wasted units was plasma that has a longer shelf life of the one year as compared to whole blood and Red Blood Cells to be used within 35 days. The reported.