Residents of the city of Changchun, capital of Jilin province, donate blood on Friday. Many cities across the country have been suffering from a serious shortage of blood supplies. [China Daily]

Health Minister Chen Zhu pulled up his own sleeve to donate blood on Friday, highlighting an acute blood shortage that has prompted surgery delays in a number of large cities.

Places such as Beijing and the provinces of Yunnan, Shandong, Jilin, Hubei and Guangdong have seen sharp declines in blood stocks mainly due to a lack of donors, the Red Cross Society of China said in an emergency notice on Friday on its website.

Blood donations in recent months are down nearly 40 percent in Beijing compared to the same periods in previous years, according to the Beijing Red Cross Blood Center website.

Many surgeries that might require blood transfusions have even been put off for months because of the shortage.

Hospitals across Yunnan - more than 200 in Kunming alone - have had to postpone surgeries and other procedures such as blood transfusions, Xinhua said.

"Voluntary blood donation is a responsibility of every healthy adult in the country," said Chen, who along with nearly 500 people from the Ministry of Health donated blood on Friday in the hope of encouraging others.

He urged the public, especially civil servants, to donate, particularly as the need for blood has risen at an annual rate of 10 percent in the country.

Among all blood donors, 60 percent are college students and migrant workers. Local permanent residents account for only 40 percent of donors, official statistics show.

China's Health Minister Chen Zhu (right) donates blood in Beijing on Friday. [China Daily]

Li Kaihong, a division director at the Kunming Blood Center, agreed, saying that a dramatic drop of college donors has led directly to a blood shortage in recent months in the city, capital of Yunnan province.

Following the move of many local university campuses to the city suburbs where there are no blood donation outlets, the number of local donors plummeted, she told China Daily on Friday.

In response, Li said they will set up blood donation stations near universities and colleges, as well as dispatch blood collection vehicles to counties to foster a more diversified pool of donors other than students and migrant workers.

Also, "we will give wide publicity to the advantages of blood donation", she said, citing misunderstandings held by many people that blood donation harms health.

"Blood donation will not harm donors' health," said Health Minister Chen Zhu, who is also a blood disease expert.

Since 1998, when China introduced the voluntary blood donation system, roughly 99 percent of blood came from voluntary donation, official statistics show.

However, less than 1 percent of the population has ever given blood, far below the average of nearly 5 percent in developed countries, according to the World Health Organization.

Liu Jiang, head of the Beijing Red Cross Blood Center, suggested routine cross-region blood transfers to tackle shortages at certain places.

"At present, such blood transfers are rare except for major disasters like the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake," he said.

However, he said 80 percent of the stored blood in the capital is used on patients from other regions, who come for its quality medical care.

"Foreigners in Beijing are welcome to donate," he added.