A study-screening of blood donors for blood transmissible diseases.

AIMS

Blood donors are of voluntary and replacement type. All donors, especially voluntary, are considered as slow risk for seropositive status for Hepatitis B and C, HIV and syphilis. The present study endeavors to screen blood donors-a slow risk group and evaluate the resultant data.

METHODOLOGY

We screened 23,068 donors serologically over 2 years for the above blood transmissible diseases. Serum alanine aminotranferase (ALT) and bilirubin were evaluated as surrogate markers in hepatitis B and C positive donors.

RESULTS

Seroprevalence rates were found to be HIV (1.96 %), syphilis (2.15 %), hepatitis B (1.98 %) and hepatitis C (0.9 %). Majority donors were voluntary (70.37 %) and male (96.2 %). However seroprevalence rates showed no significant difference: voluntary (7.02 %), replacement (6.67 %) male (6.85 %) and female (6.95 %). HCV and HIV showed highest (29.6 %) while HBV and HCV (2.5 %) showed lowest concomitance. Serum ALT and bilirubin were not effective surrogate markers. No demographic or behavioral variable was found as a significant risk factor.

CONCLUSION

Thus, all donors need adequate privacy, information, counseling and motivation in order to reduce the seropositive rates in donors. Advent of sensitive tests renders surrogate markers redundant.