Strategies for Increasing Blood Safty Level: Donor Selection Viewpoints

Background and aims: Increasing blood supply safety is one of the most important goals of everyblood service in the world. There are many different methods to achieve this goal. In this study, wereviewed donor selection aspects of strategies for improving blood safety in Yazd blood transfusioncenter, Iran.Methods: Donor selection programs which were performed to reduce prevalence of transfusiontransmitted infections among blood donors were reviewed. Data on transfusion transmitted diseasemarkers (HBsAg, HCV Ab and HIV Ab) were extracted from a database of voluntary blood donationfrom 2004 through 2010 in Yazd province. All donors with positive confirmatory test following theinitial screening test were considered to be positive. The prevalence of positive markers wascompared.Results: During 2004 through 2010, there were 254,760 donations in Yazd blood transfusion center.The prevalence of positive markers decreased during these seven years (From 0.37%, 0.14%, and 0percent in 2004 to 0.14%, 0.0 %5and 0 in 2010 for HBs Ag, HCV Ab and HIV Ab markers,respectively) despite increase of prevalence in general population. Some strategies used to protectblood supply are: The act of donor counseling and donor selection is done by trained physicians,Performing regular counseling educational workshops for them by Iranian blood transfusionorganization , Use of integrated software for donor registry and donor selection in all donor centersincluding mobile teams in the province, Surveillance of TTI markers in mobile teams’ donations andomitting those regions with high prevalence of positive markers, Increasing in regular blood donorrates by persuading first time donors to donate blood at least two times a year, detecting people whowould like to donate blood only to be tested for TTI and referring them to health care centers wherethey would be tested for free and implementing confidential unit exclusion program in blood centers.Conclusion: The results show that these programs were effective to decrease TTI in donated bloods.Increasing public knowledge on blood borne infections and their routes of transmission, importance ofdonating blood only by healthy donors and in general improving public health are necessary to have asafe blood supply in future.