The eastern province of Jiangsu is the latest in a long line of areas to announce that hospitals are experiencing a shortage of blood, China Daily reported today, apparently because less people are going out during the hot summer days and because students are away on holiday.

According to Jiangsu Blood Center, stores of blood, especially Type A, have fallen below recommended levels to less than 300,000 milliliters. They should be kept at about 400,000 milliliters.

Usually, the center receives 30,000 to 40,000 milliliters of blood from donors every day, but recently this has dropped to about 10,000 milliliters.

In a bid to top up reserves, seven blood donation buses and a blood donation center are now open around the clock and SMS reminders have been sent to previous Type A donors.

Teams from Nanjing’s Red Cross Blood Center are also moving further out into the suburbs of the provincial capital in search of donors, and some team members have succumbed to heatstroke in the course of their duties.

"It is increasingly possible that hospitals will have to postpone operations because there is not enough of the blood type that they need," said Liu Qianghui, a doctor from Jiangsu People's Hospital.

"Every summer, from July to August, there is a shortage of blood," he said, adding that “the shortage is mainly because college and university students are on holiday, so the number of volunteer donors has decreased."

Since early this month, many other parts of the country – Jiangxi, Fujian, Gansu and Hunan provinces, the cities of Chengdu and Guangzhou and the municipalities of Shanghai and Chongqing – have also reported blood shortages.

(China Daily July 29, 2005)