Publication:

Seroprevalence of human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B and hepatitis C among blood donors at a tertiary care hospital in North India

Background The prevalence of transfusion transmitted infections (TTIs), in blood transfusion services are a major problem across blood banks and hospitals in the world. In, India, the effort to provide safe transfusion to patients is a heightened problem for various reasons. In this study, seroprevalence of Transfusion transmitted infections such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) was investigated in a pool of blood donors.

Methods The data collection was carried out for a period of two years from, January 2017 to December 2018, and total sample size of donors was 38,142. We studied the frequency, gender wise distribution, donor (first time vs repeat) wise distribution and yearly trend of seroprevalence of TTIs in blood units donated at our hospital.

Results A total of 37,457 (98.2%) males and 685 (1.79%) females donated blood during the study period. The results suggest that among the blood donors, the prevalence of HCV was highest (0.77%) followed by HBV (0.46%) and HIV (0.13%). Seropositivity was found to be more in first-time donors (0.83%) as compared to repeat-donors (0.52%). Seropositivity was found to be more among males (1.35%) than females (0.01%). The discussion suggests underlying reasons for the results along-with future direction of research.

Conclusions The need of the hour is to encourage repeat voluntary blood donors in order to maintain safe supply of blood and its components to donors. Efforts should be made to include females in the blood donor pool by increasing awareness and through dedicated efforts to improve female health and nutrition.