Abstract:

Background: The field of transfusion medicine has encountered a huge problem in providing safe blood and blood products; therefore there is a need to improve testing for Transfusion transmitted Diseases (TTDs) and the selection of blood donors.

Objective: The objective of the present study was to estimate the prevalence of TTIs among healthy blood donors.

Methods: A total of 12,326 healthy blood donors reporting to our blood bank in Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, were screened for Hepatitis B surface Antigen (HBsAg), Hepatitis C virus (HCV), Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Venereal Disease Research Laboratories (VDRL) tests.

Results: A total of 12,326 healthy blood donors aged 18-60 years were screened for TTIs. Out of these 333 donors (2.7%) were seropositive for HBsAg,219 (1.8%) were seropositive for HIV,195 (1.6%) were seropositive for HCV and 57 (0.5%) had shown sero positivity for syphilis. More male donors 660 (5.4%) were infected with TTIs than female donors 144(1.2%).The prevalence of TTIs in this study showed higher prevalence among donors 18 – 40 years of age (5.3%) compared to 41-60 years of age group. The rate of co infectivity in our study was 0.3% (33/12,326.

Conclusion: This study reflects that blood transfusion is one of the risk factors of spread of TTIs especially in developing countries where rapid test-based screening protocol tends to be used increasingly in blood banks. Therefore, proper donor selection and public awareness campaign targeting communities in poor countries will be an important measure to curb the spread of TTIs through blood transfusion.

Keywords: transfusion; HIV; HBV; HCV; syphilis; seroprevalence

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