Background: Transfusion services in addition to their prime responsibility of supplying safe blood to the patient, also have a responsibility toward donor safety by means of donor notification & post donation counseling. TTI reactive donor notification is essential for early clinical intervention to minimize their disease and the risk to the partners / close contacts.

Materials & Methods: The present observational study was carried out in blood bank of Tertiary Care Hospital in Central India over a period of 4 years involving total (8172) donors including 156 reactive donors. The reactive donors were informed by blood bank counselor about an abnormal test result with an advice to report to blood bank for one to one counseling and referral to the respective department for repeat testing and further management. The response rate of transfusion transmitted infection reactive donors after notification of their abnormal test results was evaluated. 

Results: During the study period total donation of 8172 units both from voluntary and replacement donors were subjected to routine TTI screening by ELISA. Of these, (156) blood donors were found to be seroreactive. TTI reactive donors (156) for various markers were contacted, 134 (85.9%) telephonically and the remainder 22 (14.1%) who could not be contacted on phone were contacted by post maintaining confidentiality. Seroreactivity of 156 contacted donors was ( HIV, HCV, HBSAg, syphilis – 17 : 47 : 91 : 1). Of the 134 contacted donors telephonically, response rate was 93.3 % as 125 donors reported. Of the 22 contacted donors by post, 10 donors responded i.e. response rate was 45.4%. Of the total donors (156), response rate was 86.53% & non response rate was 13.4%.

Conclusion: Our study shows that our response rate was increased due to mobile communication. Response rate was also increased due to increased knowledge of infectious diseases which results in self deferral of blood donors belonging to high risk group.

Keywords: Blood donor counseling, donor notification, transfusion – Transmitted infections, HIV, HCV, HBSAg.

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Dr Sanjay N. Parate

Department of Blood Bank, Superspeciality Hospital & Govt. Medical College, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India

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