Hema Budaraju, Product Lead, Health, and
Ritesh Mehta, Head of Programs, South Asia, of the social media giant say the
new feature, second after India, will be introduced at 6am on Tuesday.
Speaking to bdnews24.com on Monday in Dhaka,
they said they are getting huge response in India and in the four months of
introducing the feature in October, over 6 million people have signed up as
donors and thousands of people are using the feature.
“They are able to find a donor in a short
amount of time,” Budaraju said.
Bangladesh
is one of the 71 countries in the world, according to the WHO, that has a
shortage of safe blood.
People
often take to Facebook to appeal for blood donation. According to the
Bangladesh government, over 30 million people use Facebook.
Budaraju said they had noticed thousands of
people look for blood through Facebook posts each week in Bangladesh. There are
1,400 groups related to blood donation on Facebook, she said.
“This is where Facebook can help by finding
ways to more efficiently bring blood donors, people and organisations
together,” she said. They have spoken with the relevant stakeholders in
Bangladesh including Sandhani, Red Crescent and BRAC before designing and
launching the feature.
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, Facebook will show a message in the News Feed or users
can edit their Profiles to sign up.
All
information will remain private and set to Only Me by default, but users can
choose to share their donor status more widely. This feature will be available
on Android, iOS and the Internet.
When people
are seeking donations, they will be able to create special posts to spread the
word. Facebook will automatically notify blood donors who may be nearby to
help.
Donors can
then review the request and, if they wish to respond, contact the requester
directly through a phone call.
The
requester would not be able to see any information about the donor, unless the
donor explicitly provides it when he or she replies.
When
organisations are hosting a blood camp event in Bangladesh, they will be able
to create an event on Facebook and nearby blood donors can be notified. Donors
can review the event and indicate if they are going or interested.
Organisations
interested in using the blood donations feature can contact:
https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/712333468960840
