Chinese officials and state media warned Sunday that hospitals and clinics are running low on blood due to the massive winter outbreak of influenza and respiratory illnesses.
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the outbreak has combined with frigid winter temperatures to make people reluctant to donate blood. City health officials pleaded with residents to provide more donations as quickly as possible to replenish the lowest blood stocks since the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic.
“When the temperature starts to drop in autumn and winter, the number of people on the streets decreases, causing blood donor numbers to decline,” noted Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Senior Fellow for Global Health Yanzhong Huang.
“Meanwhile, China rules that people with a cold, flu, or a sore throat are ineligible to donate blood. Therefore, a lot of infected people during the flu season may not meet the conditions to donate blood,” he continued.
Huang added that a third factor was that potential donors worry that even donating blood at the cleanest and most meticulous hospitals could increase their risk of disease because their immune systems would be weakened by losing blood.
Parents with children suffering from respiratory diseases line up at a children’s hospital in Chongqing, China, on November 23, 2023. (CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
The SCMP suggested a fourth reason for the blood shortage: many Chinese people suspect the medical system is rigged to favor Party elites, so making up the shortfall with massive voluntary donations would be another example of the privileged taking advantage of the masses.
An incident from October has been hotly discussed on Chinese social media: a young woman from Shanghai on her honeymoon in Tibet was seriously injured in a car accident. When she arrived at a Tibetan hospital with severe blood loss and potentially fatal injuries, dozens of local civil servants and first responders quickly stepped forward to donate blood.
The woman’s husband posted a video on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in which he said enough blood was donated to replace her body’s entire supply twice over. “The entire Ngari region’s Type A blood has been transfused to you,” he told her.
Cynical observers speculated the woman’s family had enough wealth or political influence to obtain such a remarkable volume of transfusions, conjuring the unpleasant image of Tibetans getting sucked dry to save the life of a Chinese elite.
“After passing the civil service exam, all that you are is a mobile blood bank for the rich,” a social media user wrote. Others dubbed the young bride “Health Bar Sister,” as though she were a character in a videogame receiving a load of bonus hit points.
On Monday, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said there were signs that the outbreak of respiratory illness among children was finally beginning to subside. The NHC also said the risk to public health posed by the latest Wuhan coronavirus variant, JN.1, was “relatively low.”
