Beijing says can provide rare blood type during Olympics

BEIJING, July 31 (Reuters) - Beijing is confident it can provide sufficient supplies of rhesus negative blood -- rare in China but more common amongst Caucasians -- during next month's Olympics, a senior health official said on Thursday.

"We have a team of 1,000 volunteers in Beijing at present who are rhesus negative, and we can call on them to give blood if there is an emergency," Deng Xiaohong, deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Health Administration, told a news conference.

In China only about three out of every 1,000 people are rhesus negative, compared with about 15 percent of Caucasians.

Deng said there was a case recently where an American had been badly injured in a car accident in the nearby city of Tianjin and urgently needed rhesus negative blood.

"We collected blood from volunteers in Beijing, including two Britons, two Americans and a Danish national, and were successful in saving his life," she added. "This experience shows that Beijing has the ability to provide blood under special situations."

The city has a total of 100,000 or so volunteer blood donors, Deng said, and in an emergency can call upon other provinces to provide blood.

Beijing was also stepping up checks of donated blood to ensure no diseases are transmitted during transfusions, she added.

Tainted blood transfusions were a main cause behind the spread of AIDS in China, and some activists say blood is still not properly screened. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Ken Wills and David Fox) (For more stories visit our multimedia website "Road to Beijing" here; and see our blog at blogs.reuters.com/china)