The Vietnam Red Cross (VNRC) will establish an e-blood bank later thisyear in an effort to ease the nation's blood shortage, said director ofthe VNRC's Humanitarian Blood Donation Department Nguyen Duc Thuan.

The bank is an on-line data system that links blood donors, or whoeverwilling to donate blood if requested, with an electronic portalaccessible by donors over the internet or mobile devices.

"Patients will access the e-bank and get contact to e-bankrepresentatives from their home provinces and cities for support. Therepresentative will provide them with nearest blood donors and help themconnect to blood donors, even at night," said Thuan.

"Many patients don't know where or who to contact when they need bloodin emergency cases, especially when hospitals run out of blood," saidThuan.

"The model of e-blood bank has been implemented with good outcomes in other countries," added Thuan.

Thuan said that the e-bank will be experimentally operated from thebeginning of May in Hanoi and HCM City and officially launchedby the end of November. The VNRC will also promote the bank'sinformation at 100 blood transfusion units at hospitals and medicalunits nation-wide.

VNRC plans to increase the number of blood donors from the current 6,000 to 15,000 by the end of this year and 80,000 by 2015.

The e-bank is expected to provide 37,500 blood units in 2012, and 160,000 units in 2015, according to Thuan.

The Ministry of Health statistics say that Vietnam currently hasmet nearly 40 percent of people's blood transfusion demand in hospitalsand medical units nationwide.

Last year, the countrycollected over 675,000 blood units, 84.2 percent coming from volunteers.However, only about 0.78 percent of Vietnamese have ever donated blood./.