Bloodman, Meta hold webinar on blood donation

Bloodman, the first digital blood donation company in Bangladesh, in association with the ICT division, DGHS (Directorate General of Health Services) and Meta organised a webinar titled “Building Sustainable Digital Supply of Blood in Bangladesh” on Thursday.

Joint secretary of the ICT division Altaf Hossain, line director of DGHS Dr. Md. Nazmul Islam, Policy Programs Manager for South Asia at Meta Yasas Vishuddhi Abeywickrama and founder of Bloodman Sahariar Hasan Jisun took part in the event.

Bloodman is a health tech startup in collaboration with the ICT division. Bloodman in partnership with Meta, DGHS and the ICT ministry has provided training to more than 200 hospitals to use Facebook’s Blood Donations tool to digitally accomplish tasks such as finding blood donors for different needs and emergencies and building connections between blood seekers and blood donors.

In continuation of this, efforts are going on to implement this initiative of Meta on a large scale across the country, said the ICT ministry.

“Bloodman is a successful start-up. We provide all kinds of assistance for those who need improvements like workplace, training, mentoring, etc. We will have the utmost support on how people can get better health care by creating a digital healthcare system using this meta blood donation tool through Bloodman,” said Altaf Hossain Joint secretary of the ICT division.

Shahriar Hasan Jisan, the founder and chairman of Bloodman Bangladesh, said, “People are still fighting for safe blood in case of emergency. The main challenge in this country of more than 16 crore people is the lack of communication between blood seekers and blood donors. In this case, Facebook has played an important role in establishing the connection between the two parties. This makes finding platelet donors for dengue patients and plasma donors for Covid-19 patients easier. So we have to come forward to overcome the blood shortage by voluntarily donating blood to your nearest blood bank.”

Yasas Visuddhi Abeywickrama, policy programmes manager for South Asia at Meta, said, “Since we launched our Blood Donations feature in 2017, over 100 million people globally have signed up to receive notifications from nearby blood banks about opportunities to donate. Meta’s local partners in Bangladesh and around the world have reported a significant increase in the number of voluntary blood donors through our Blood Donations feature. We will continue to support our partners in increasing voluntary blood donations in Bangladesh.”