Blood for clinical use in China entirely from voluntary donation: official

BEIJING - The blood for clinical use in China now entirely comes from voluntary blood donations, according to Zhou Changqiang, an official from the country's National Health Commission (NHC) on Thursday.

This signifies that China has reached the goal put forward by the World Health Organization, that the full coverage of voluntarily donated blood in clinical use should be completed by 2020, said Zhou at a ceremony marking the 20 years of the implementation of the country's blood donation law.

China currently has 32 blood centers, with 321 blood stations, 99 blood banks, and 1,390 fixed blood collection points.

An effective service system of blood stations that covers both urban and rural areas has already been set up, featuring blood centers and stations, and supplemented by county-level blood banks in rural areas, he said.

The number of voluntary blood donations has seen 20 years of consecutive growth in China, from 328,000 in 1998 to 14.59 million in 2017, figures from the NHC showed.

The number of voluntary blood donors and the volume of blood collected in the country from January to November this year have increased by 3 and 4 percent respectively year on year, according to Zhou.