Research - Abstract

Cite this article:

Nahom Fessehaye, Durgadas Naik, Tesfay Fessehaye. Transfusion transmitted infections – A retrospective analysis from the National Blood Transfusion Service in Eritrea.
The Pan African Medical Journal. 2011;9:40

Key words: Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay, Hepatitis B Virus, Hepatitis C Virus, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, Transfusion Transmitted Infection, Blood transfusion, Eritrea

Permanent link: http://www.panafrican-med-journal.com/content/article/9/40/full

Received: 17/01/2011 - Accepted: 11/08/2011 - Published: 18/08/2011

© Nahom Fessehaye et al. The Pan African Medical Journal - ISSN 1937-8688. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Transfusion transmitted infections – A retrospective analysis from the National Blood Transfusion Service in Eritrea

Nahom Fessehaye¹, Durgadas Naik^1,&, Tesfay Fessehaye¹

¹Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Asmara College of Health Sciences, Asmara, Eritrea

^&Corresponding author
Durgadas Naik, Associate Professor, Dept. of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, Asmara College of Health Sciences, Asmara, Eritrea

Background

The emergence of transfusion transmitted infection (TTI) especially HIV/AIDS has created a huge obstacle in ensuring blood safety. To assess the situation in Eritrea, we carried out a retrospective study of 29,501 blood donors for the prevalence of TTI’s i.e. HIV, HBV, HCV and Syphilis.

Methods

The study population included all donors who donated blood from January 2006 to November 2009. The data was collected from the National Blood Transfusion Services (NTBS) of Eritrea and includes category of donor and result for TTI markers.

Results

A total of 29,501 units of blood were collected from 23,385(79%) voluntary blood donors and the rest 6,116(21%) units were collected from family replacement donors. The over all prevalence of TTI’s were 3.8% with 3.5% in voluntary blood donors and 5.1% in family replacement donors. The sero-prevalence for TTI markers were 0.18% HIV, 2.58% HBV, 0.57% HCV and 0.49% Syphilis.

Conclusion

In conclusion, even if the TTI prevalence rate among Eritrean blood donors is low, ensuring blood safety has a long way to go.

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