[AIDS and blood transfusion].

In May, 1985, the Red Cross Blood Donation Center of Vienna, Lower Austria, and Burgenland started routine screening for HIV 1 antibodies; by summer 1989, about 750,000 blood donors and donations had been examined. During this period, 59 donors have been proved positive for HIV 1; they have been interviewed and the origin of the infection was explored. Since there were donors within this group, who had repeatedly given blood for many years, we carried out a follow-up study in order to find out whether the recipients had been infected by these donors before May, 1985. In addition, we give the test results of about 200,000 donors screened for HIV 1 antigen and discuss the value of such tests. Recently, 80,000 donors were screened for anti-HIV 1 and 2 antibodies; there has been no donor positive for HIV 2, so far. A much higher number of donors than those marked for confirmed western blot had to be regarded as questionable positive. In such cases, details of western blot results are listed; we discuss the problem of the evaluation of such results as well as the question of informing these donors.