Facebook Introduces New Feature in Bangladesh to Help Increase Blood Donations

DHAKA, Jan. 22 (NsNewsWire) — Today, Facebook is launching a blood donations feature in Bangladesh to make it easier for people to sign up to be blood donors and to help people and organizations in need. Bangladesh, like many countries, has a shortage of safe blood. In some cases, this shortage causes patients and their families to be 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 — including by reaching out to their network on Facebook.

This is where Facebook can help by finding ways to more efficiently bring blood donors, people and organizations together. We have worked together with nonprofit 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, where more than 6 million people have signed up to be blood donors on Facebook.

Making It Easier to Become a Blood Donor
Starting today, people using Facebook in Bangladesh will be able to sign up to be blood donors. To sign up, people can edit their profiles to let others know that they are willing to donate blood or visit facebook.com/donateblood. To help encourage participation, we’ll show a message in News Feed or people can edit their Profiles to sign up. 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 www.  PRESS RELEASE