Web Desk (March 04, 2018): Facebook is launching a blood donations feature in Pakistan to make it easier for people to sign up to be blood donors, and to help connect donors with people and organizations in need.
Pakistan, like many countries, has a shortage of safe blood. In some cases, this shortage means patients and their families are responsible for finding donors to replace the blood they receive from blood banks or hospitals.
This can cause high-stress situations as people try to find blood donors on their own. Many people are reaching out to their networks on Facebook.
There are thousands of posts each month in Pakistan seeking blood donors on Facebook, and over 100,000 people in blood donation groups.
This is where Facebook can help, by finding ways to more efficiently bring blood donors, people and organizations together.
We have worked together with non-profit organizations, health industry experts, potential donors and people who have used Facebook to find blood donors to ensure that this feature was designed to be useful to people.
We recently launched a similar tool in India and Bangladesh, where nearly 7 million people have signed up to be blood donors on Facebook.
People using Facebook in Pakistan will be able to sign up to be blood donors either on their profiles or by visiting facebook.com/donateblood. All information will remain private and set to Only Me by default, but people can choose to share their donor status more widely. This feature will be available on Android, iOS and desktop.
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