Facebook is planning to launch a new feature to facilitate blood donations from October 1 in India which is it’s second largest user base. This new feature will make it easier and faster for people, hospitals and blood banks to connect to blood donors in that particular location. While many people are willing to donate blood, they might know where to go and who exactly needs their blood group and how to sign up for same. By adding this information on a social media like Facebook, it will create visible reminders for interested donors and fasten the process.
Under this new initiative, Facebook users who are interested in donating blood will be able to sign up as blood donors starting from October 1. All their personal information such as their blood group, their age, sex and whether they have donated blood earlier will be kept as private and will not be shared to public. People who are interested to donate blood can share their donor status on the Facebook timelines according to Hema Budaraju, the Product Manager of Health at Facebook.
National Blood Donation Day
With this new initiative, Facebook is planning to create a special kind of post for requesting particular donations for certain blood group in a specific location in order to notify the blood donors who are qualified in that particular location. The social media giant has decided to commence this new Initiative from October 1st, which is the National Blood donation day in India. From Oct 1, Facebook users will start seeing News Feeds on their timeline asking them to sign up and also there will be a new section added to their profile which they could fill up. This way Facebook will make it easier for the recipients who are in need of particular blood group to connect with donors in that area immediately.
The social media giant will roll out the next phase in India during upcoming weeks, which will allow people to make requests for donors to give blood for a person in need or to specific organisations like hospitals or blood banks. They can post all the necessary information such as the need blood group, which location it needs to be donated, a brief about the person in need of blood and also their contact details. Once someone posts this information, the qualified blood donors in that location will automatically receive a Facebook notification asking them to donate blood along with the particular post which has the contact details. This will make it easier for donors to quickly contact the recipients through Phone Call or Whatsapp and fastens the donation process.
Already Facebook has launched special features for India especially like partnering with Airtel for commercial WiFi Hotspots. They also launched a similar feature for organ donation back in 2012. With 201 million active Facebook users in India, this new feature will definitely reduce the blood shortage and save the lives of people who are in need of blood. If this feature goes well in India, they will soon roll out the same in other countries as well.