Prevelance of anti-hiv, hbs-ag and anti-hcv reactivity in different categories of egyption blood donors : Experience of the national cancer institute in the last 5 years

Abstract EN

Background : transfusion related hepatitis is a major concern to the transfusion medicine community in Egypt.

A recent government mandate requires that all blood used for transfusion has to be collected from non-paid volunteer donors.

This study attempted to characterize the safety profile of different groups among the Egyptian blood donors in order to maximize the use of limited recruitment resources.

Material and Methods : this is a retrospective study in which we reviewed the testing records of 46747 donors who presented at random at our donor room as well as at the blood drives conducted at different organizations between March 1995 and August 2000.

Donor groups were divided into 7 categories based on the type of organization and place of the blood drives.

HBs-Ag, anti-HCV and anti-HIV testing results were examined and tabulated by category.

Results : only two positive HIV donors were identified.

The overall prevalence of HBs-Ag was 2.1 % and HCV was 7.1 %.

Prevalence of co-infections with HBV and HCV was 0.086 %.

Conclusions : hepatitis C continues to represent a serious challenge in Egypt despite the decreasing prevalence among blood donors.

Groups with educated members who belong to moderate or high socioeconomic background such as college and high school students as well as members of the social and sports clubs are safer donors and should be targeted with intensive educational and recruitment efforts.