A husband from Liaoning Province is urging Rh-negative AB blood type donors – and especially foreigners, who are more prone as carriers – to help his wife, in crucial need of 600 cubic millimeters of blood.

A Shanghai hospital needs the blood to remove a tumor in her sacrum, a surgery she desperately needed as of on Sunday.

It is the second such call on the generosity of blood donors in the city this year, following a patient with the same rare blood type, whose plea to donors for help with a blood transfusion was answered in May.

Liu Yang said that while his wife's mother and sister, together with the aid of the hospital via the Shanghai Blood Center, have come up with 1,600 cubic millimeters of blood, the 23-year-old love of his life, Xie Junyu, still needs 400 cubic millimeters of blood.

"I really can't lose her," he told the Global Times on Sunday. "I'm begging anyone who can help to please give – before it's too late."

The Shanghai Blood Center, which is able to supply 400 cubic millimeters of blood to the hospital for the operation, the most it can legally give in this case, said that a severe shortage in Rh-negative blood has led to an increasing number of such cases in recent years.

"The city needs at least 300 liters of Rh-negative blood every year," Shen Xingfeng, deputy director of Shanghai Blood Center, told the Global Times on Sunday. "We're constantly short of this blood type."

He said that its supply of the rare blood type is primarily used for emergent situations, with only two to four out of every 1,000 Chinese people likely to have it in contrast to 15 percent of Caucasians.

"But Xie needs Rh-negative AB blood; it's even rarer among the 5 million Chinese people with an Rh-negative blood type," he added. "That's why we try to target foreign donors during our blood drives."

The China Rare Blood Type Union said on Sunday that it would call upon its 300 Shanghai donors, if Xie seeks help from the grass-roots organization that aided 120 Chinese people last year.

"We're a self-help group," Niu Lianzhong, director of China Rare Blood Type Union, founded a decade ago, told the Global Times on Sunday. "Any volunteer who has donated for others is given priority in the future, should he or she ever need the deed returned."