Forty blood banks and blood-donation centers in several municipalities, provinces and autonomous regions in north China have contributed to the bank of rare blood and set up special rosters of blood donors after carefully documenting the RH negative population in the region.

These 40 institutions will all have 24-hour service hot lines to ensure prompt provision of the rare blood in case of emergencies, said a source from the blood bank.

Only three out of every thousand Han people, the dominant ethnic group in China, have RH negative blood. RH negative people must receive transfusions of this type of blood to avoid hemolysis.

In recent years blood centers across China have been developing new technology to prolong the life of RH negative blood from just weeks to several years.

(Xinhua News Agency November 1, 2002)