Published in AIDS action
Blood transfusion programs can minimize the risk of transfusing infected blood through three strategies: 1) recruiting and counseling voluntary donors who are at low risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 2) screening all donated blood for HIV and other infections transmitted by blood and safely disposing of infected blood, and 3) reducing the...
Published in AIDS action
5-10% of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission in developing countries occurs via blood transfusion; collecting sufficient amounts of safe blood poses ethical and financial challenges. The ideal blood donors are healthy adults and young persons; however, this group is most likely to be sexually active and, therefore, at risk of infection ...
Published in AIDS action
Education and counseling services aimed at blood donors have the potential not only to increase the safety of the blood supply, but also to promote safer sexual behavior. Public education campaigns should emphasize the social responsibility aspect of blood donation, including stories about lives saved with blood transfusions, and stress the need fo...
Published in AIDS action
In 1993, Zimbabwe's blood service revised its notification system to protect the confidentiality of blood donors found to be positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or another sexually transmitted disease (STD). In the past, such donors were referred back to their physicians, many of whom were unable or unwilling to discuss STDs; other dono...
Published in AIDS weekly plus
There is still a "... relatively high rate of HIV window-period blood donation in Thailand," according to a multicenter team. The results of their recent survey "... underscore the need to improve blood safety, especially in northern Thailand were HIV rates are substantially higher than in Bangkok" (AIDS 1996; 10: 1157-1162). The Thailand-based tea...
Published in Journal of public health medicine
A retrospective review of the screening records of the 65,208 blood donors in Singapore from December 7, 1992, to August 31, 1994, revealed a relatively low prevalence of hepatitis C infection. Hepatitis C is the main cause of post-transfusion hepatitis. A total of 241 donors were positive for this strain, for a period prevalence of 0.37%. 58% of t...
Published in AIDS weekly
Because of the dramatic rise in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections in Thailand, the Thai Ministry of Public Health (MOPH) started a biannual sentinel surveillance program of intravenous drug users, blood donors, pregnant women, and commercial sex workers (CSWs) in 1989. The Royal Thai Army (RTA) also began screening young men, who had be...
Published in East African medical journal
A study was carried out to assess the attitudes and beliefs about blood donation among the population of Mwanza Region, Tanzania, in order to target better the voluntary blood donor recruitment and retention. A random sample of 1141 adults, 743 residents of Mwanza town and 398 from Mwanza rural areas were interviewed on aspects related to blood don...
Published in The Indian journal of medical research
This study was undertaken to determine the prevalence of transfusion transmitted diseases (TTDs) among local blood donors, the safety offered by the four mandatory tests (for HIV, HBsAg, syphilis and malaria) and to assess alanine aminotransferase (ALT) as a surrogate test. A total of 313 blood donors were tested for HBsAg, hepatitis B core (HBc) a...
Published in Transfusion
A major epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) infections has developed in Thailand since 1988. The blood banks in Chiang Mai began screening donors for HIV-1 antibodies in February 1988 and for p24 antigen in April 1992. The trends of HIV-1 antibody prevalence were analyzed by type of donor (i.e., paid, replacement, and voluntary)...
