A retrospective study of prevalence of antibody to HIV in blood donors at Ile-Ife, Nigeria.

Records of voluntary and remunerative blood donors bled at the OAUTHC, Ile-Ife, Nigeria between January 1993 and December 2000 were reviewed for HIV sero-positivity. With a structured questionnaire, and over a period of 2 months, the attitudes and awareness of some of the donors of HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country were also assessed. Of the 16,080 units of blood collected in the period under review, only 1073(6.7%) were obtained from voluntary donors. The cumulative HIV seroprevalence rate was 2.1% in the paid donors as against 0.3% in the voluntary donors (c2 = 16.3, df = 1, p = 0.00003). Sixty-five (805) of the donors interviewed confirmed previous knowledge of HIV/AIDS before the interview. All the respondents appreciated the roles of blood transfusion in the transmission of AIDS viruses. The majority (74%) of the respondents were unemployed. Poverty was the reason given by 61(75%) of the commercial donors for selling their blood. We conclude that there is a greater risk of transmitting AIDS viruses (and possibly other blood transmissible diseases) through remunerated blood donors.