(Ecns.cn) – China is planning to widen the age range of healthy citizens who may volunteer to donate blood, reported the Yangtze Evening News on Tuesday.
Modifications would be made to Article 2 of the Law on Blood Donation, which currently allows voluntary blood donation by healthy citizens between the ages of 18 and 55. After the changes, the age range would be extended to between 17 and 60.
The move would hopefully address low blood reserves due to increasing demand and declining donations in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.
In east China's Jiangsu Province, the provincial blood center received a total of 648,414 voluntary whole blood donations from January to September in 2011, up 4.62% compared to the same period last year.
In terms of donations of blood components, the number was 46,533 in the first nine months, up 4.5% from a year earlier, according to statistics released by the Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Health.
However, the growth of demand has surpassed that of supply, as the consumption of blood for clinical use increases about 10% every year in Jiangsu, said Li Shaodong, director of the Healthcare Reform Office of the Jiangsu Provincial Bureau of Health.
Across the nation, blood donations grow at an annual speed of 7.7% but the consumption of blood for clinical uses increases about 12% every year, according to Li.
Illegal blood collection for commercial purposes has been banned since 1998, when China's first Law on Blood Donation took effect.
