Database platform plan to block HIV positive blood donors

Shanghai blood center is working with Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to establish an online database platform to monitor confirmed HIV positive blood donors in the three areas.

The aim is to prevent them from donating blood, according to the Annual Report on Development of China's Blood Collection and Supply Industry released on Thursday.

The platform will be officially launched by the end of this year. It will enable the blood centers to share information and block HIV positive donors in real time.

The blood centers started to design the platform in 2015, with the aim of increasing the efficiency of information sharing.

Blood centers in Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang signed an agreement in 2010 to share data on HIV positive donors in each area. The information was encrypted so only authorized staff workers could decode the information.

According to the report, from September 2012 to last March, the three areas have jointly blocked 1,042 HIV positive donors, 515 of whom came from Shanghai.

“We still have a lot of work to do,” said Liu Jiaxin, a professor at Chinese Academy of Medical Science who is also the chief editor of the report, “China is so big and different provinces have different ways to label or identity blood samples.” 

Liu said the next step is to set up a standardized labeling method that applies to all blood stations in China so that they can exchange information more efficiently.