INTRODUCTION: India being the second highly populated nation in the world. HIV/AIDS has acquired pandemic proportion in the world. Estimate by WHO for current infection rate in Asia. India has the third largest HIV epidemic in the world. HIV prevalence in the age group 15-49 yrs was an estimate of 0.2%. India has been classified as an intermediate in the Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) endemic (HBsAg carriage 2-7%) zone with the second largest global pool of chronic HBV infections. Safety assessment of the blood supply, the quality of screening measures and the risk of transfusion transmitted infectious diseases (TTIs) in any country can be estimated by scrutinizing the files of blood donors. After the introduction of the blood banks and improved storage facilities, it became more extensively used. Blood is one of the major sources of TTIs like hepatitis B, hepatitis C, HIV, syphilis, and many other blood borne diseases. Disclosure of these threats brought a dramatic change in attitude of physicians and patients about blood transfusion. The objective of this study is to determine the seroprevalence of transfusion transmitted infections amidst voluntary blood donors at a rural tertiary healthcare teaching hospital in Chhattisgarh.
MATERIAL AND METHODS: This retrospective study was carried out in Chandulal Chandrakar Memorial Medical College, Kachandur, Durg. Blood donors were volunteers, or and commercial donors who donated the blood and paid by patients, their families, or friends to replace blood used or expected to be used for patients from the blood bank of the hospital. After proper donation of blood routine screening of blood was carried out according to standard protocol. Laboratory diagnosis of HIV 1 and HIV 2 was carried out by ELISA test. Hepatitis B surface antigen was screened by using ELISA. RESULTS: A total of 1915 consecutive blood donors’ sera were screened at Chandulal Chandrakar Memorial Medical College, blood bank during study period. Of these 1914 were male and 1 female. The mean age of patients was found to be 29.34 years with standard deviation (SD) of 11.65 Years. Among all blood donors in present study, 759(39.63%) were first time donors and 1156(60.37%) were repeated donors. 1 patient was HIV positive in first donation group while 3 (75%) were positive in repeat donation group. 7 (38.9%) were HBsAg positive in in first donation group while 11(61.1%) were positive in repeat donation group. Two patients in first donation group had dual infection of HIV and HBsAg.
CONCLUSION: Seropositivity was high in repeated donors as compared to first time donors. The incidence of HIV is observed to be 0.2% and that of HBsAg is 0.94%. Strict selection of blood donors should be done to avoid transfusion-transmissible infections during the window period.
Syphilis in blood donors: Pre-transfusion serological screening by Rapid Plasma Reagin (RPR) Test at the blood bank of a Teaching Medical Institute in North Gujarat, India