Transfusion Transmissible Infections (TTIs)- trends and seroprevalence among blood donors at blood center of a tertiary care hospital- A 5 year study

Natasha Mittal; Saroj Rajput; Satish Kumar; Bhaskar Das

Volume : VIII, Issue : IX, September - 2019

Transfusion Transmissible Infections (TTIs)- trends and seroprevalence among blood donors at blood center of a tertiary care hospital- A 5 year study

Natasha Mittal, Saroj Rajput, Satish Kumar, Bhaskar Das

Abstract :

INTRODUCTION: Blood transfusion services is an integral part of every health care organization. It is the duty of every health care organisation to ensure safe blood for the patients by mandatorily screening blood and products for transfusion transmitted infections like Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) , Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) , Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) , syphilis and malaria. Every unit of blood carries a 1% chance of transfusion transmitted diseases. Despite following WHO guidelines for screening of blood donors and blood, zero risk transfusion is still a distant dream because of the inability of the tests to detect disease in the window period of infection, immunologically variant viruses, immune–silent carriers and inadvertent laboratory testing errors. We conducted this 5 year retrospective study at our hospital based blood center located in National Capital Region of India, to analyse the trend of blood donors and to estimate the seroporevalence of HIV, HBV, HCV, syphilis and malaria among healthy blood donor population. METHODS: A retrospective review of donor records was carried out over a 5 year period from January 2014 to December 2018. The trends of donors over the 5 year period was analyzed and the seroprevalence of HIV, HBV, HCV, syphilis and malaria was estimated. RESULTS: A total of 16,855 units of blood were donated during the period comprising of 10,959 (65%) replacement and 5,896 (35%) voluntary donors. There were 16,451 (97.6%) males and 404 (2.4%) females. Total number of seropositive units was 392 (2.3%) . The overall prevalence of HIV, HBV, HCV, syphilis and malaria infections was found to be 0.25%, 1.3%, 0.5%, 0.2% and 0% respectively. CONCLUSION: Strict criteria of donor selection and screening should be followed to ensure safe blood transfusion. More efforts are needed to encourage voluntary donations as voluntary donors are healthy donors with lowest rate of seroprevalence of TTIs. More female donors should be motivated for blood donation as the seroprevalence of TTI is low in the female donor population.