Vietnam will build an online blood bank this year in a move to ease the country’s severe lack of blood for medical treatment, the An Ninh Thu Do newspaper reported Mar 31. The information was released at a meeting in Hanoi on March 30 to review the work of voluntary blood donation in 2010 and draw up the plan for 2011. The e-blood bank is expected to provide patients with 37,500 units of blood by 2012 and 160,000 ones by 2015. The facility will benefit hundreds of thousands of patients via accessing Internet to call on voluntary blood donors in case of necessity. Vietnam will need between 760,000-800,000 units of blood for medical purposes in 2011, including 85% from volunteers, the National Committee on Blood Donation said, adding that total amount of blood units received in the country was estimated at 570,000 last year, rising by 12% on year. The health sector, meanwhile, estimates to need 4,500 blood units daily while the current donation meets only 30%-40% of its total demand, health experts said. (An Ninh Thu Do – Capital Security Mar 31 p2)
