Facebook is building a new feature to help blood donors and people in need of blood in India connect.
On October 1, India's National Blood Donor Day, Facebook will start pushing users to register as blood donors. People will see the prompt in their timelines and will be able to mark themselves as a donor on their profiles and choose to share it with friends.
In the coming weeks, it will allow individuals or organizations looking for blood to create posts to request it. Posts can be targeted to certain areas, so a notification will be pushed to donors closest to the person looking for blood.
When donors accept the request, organizations will be able to reach them privately via phone call or through Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp platforms
Facebook says this feature serves a real need. India is facing a blood shortage, with about 10% fewer donations than it needs. More than 38,000 donations are needed every day to address the shortfall, for the hundreds of millions of major surgeries performed.
"People use Facebook literally thousands of times a week to search for blood donors," Hema Budaraju, a product manager at Facebook, told CNN.
The feature will first be rolled out to Android apps and the mobile web version, which are the two ways most Indians interact with Facebook.
Facebook is inviting people in India to go to facebook.com/donateblood to register for this good cause.
