By Laura MacInnis

GENEVA, June 13 (Reuters) - China has improved the safety of its blood supply by drawing in more volunteer donors, some of whom will be awarded Olympics-inspired "medals for life," the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.

Unpaid donations now make up 98.5 percent of blood stocks used in surgery and emergency treatments in China, according to the WHO. A decade ago, 80 percent of the Chinese supply came from relatives and paid donors -- who may be more inclined to hide information about their health.

The host of this year's Olympics will give gold medals to volunteers who have given blood 20 times to celebrate what the United Nations agency called "a huge shift... in the way Chinese people think about blood donation."

"That shift became even more apparent last month, when thousands of people queued up all over the country to give blood to help the Sichuan earthquake victims," the WHO said in a statement released for World Blood Donor Day, June 14.

Hundreds of thousands of farmers in the central province of Henan were infected in the 1990s through schemes in which people sold blood to unsanitary, often state-run health clinics, making the province the centre of China's AIDS epidemic.

Chinese authorities have moved to clean up the country's blood collection centres in past years, but underground blood selling is still seen as a problem.

The WHO says donations from volunteers have the lowest prevalence of HIV, hepatitis viruses and other blood-borne infections. Family members and people who are paid to give blood often donate in blood centres which may not adequately screen for infectious diseases.

"Sufficient supplies of safe blood can only be assured by regular donations from voluntary unpaid donors," the WHO said.

There are only 54 countries worldwide whose blood supplies rely entirely on volunteers. Elsewhere the donation rate is often too low, particularly in the developing world which, according to the WHO, has less than 45 percent of the world's blood supply despite having 80 percent of the global population. (Editing by Stephanie Nebehay and Raissa Kasolowsky)

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