Beijing says can provide rare blood type during Olympics

Tag : Emergency Call

BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing is confident it can provide sufficientsupplies of rhesus negative blood -- rare in China but more commonamongst Caucasians -- during next month's Olympics, a senior healthofficial said on Thursday.
"We have a team of 1,000 volunteers in Beijing at present who arerhesus negative, and we can call on them to give blood if there isan emergency," Deng Xiaohong, deputy director of the BeijingMunicipal Health Administration, told a news conference.
In China only about three out of every 1,000 people are rhesusnegative, compared with about 15 percent of Caucasians.
Deng said there was a case recently where an American had beenbadly injured in a car accident in the nearby city of Tianjin andurgently needed rhesus negative blood.
"We collected blood from volunteers in Beijing, including twoBritons, two Americans and a Danish national, and were successfulin saving his life," she added. "This experience shows that Beijinghas the ability to provide blood under special situations."
The city has a total of 100,000 or so volunteer blood donors, Dengsaid, and in an emergency can call upon other provinces to provideblood.
Beijing was also stepping up checks of donated blood to ensure nodiseases are transmitted during transfusions, she added.
Tainted blood transfusions were a main cause behind the spread ofAIDS in China, and some activists say blood is still not properlyscreened.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Ken Wills and David Fox)