Seroprevalence of HIV Antibodies in Healthy Blood Donors in a University Blood Bank of Western U.P. and National Capital Region, India - A 4 Year Study

The acute medical services cannot exist without blood transfusion - life savers in many situations. Usually, giving blood is generous. Sometimes, however, it is lethal.

In countries where blood donors get paid by the pint, drug addicts, street dwellers & others who have little to sell except their bodies flock to for - profit blood centers.

Many of these people carry AIDS virus. If one blood bank tests for AIDS antibodies & defers the HIV positive volunteers away - forget about treating them - those poor and desperate enough can often find another, less scrupulous blood bank or a hospital that doesn't do the testing properly. Such hospitals continue to flourish and nobody knows from whose veins the blood is flowing from.

The inevitable result is a frightening rate of contamination. Infection through blood is a major issue in all countries but practically in those with economic constraints with limited safety.

The present study was conducted to find out the seroprevalence of HIV antibodies in 6000 donors in a tertiary medical centre. The screening was done by ELISA third generation microelisa kit.

Seroprevalence of anti - HIV in 6000 donors was 0.1833%

Males show higher incidence and no female donor was found to be HIV seropositive in this study.

Also, no voluntary donor was found to be positive for HIV.

Blood group A negative showed higher positivity (1.075%) followed by blood group B positive (0.2545%)

Age group 41–50 years showed highest positivity (0.3048%) followed by 21–30 yrs (0.2087%).