Abstract

Blood safety is a challenging task in India, with a population of around 1.39 billion and with A high prevalence rate of HIV (0.30%), HBV (2-4.2%) and HCV (0.5- 1.5%) in general population. TTI’s pose a potential threat to safe blood transfusion practices, and it is more challenging task. Nucleic acid testing (NAT) in blood donor screening has been implemented in many developed countries to reduce the risk of transfusion-transmitted viral infections (TTIs). It is a very sensitive and specific test for detection of viral nucleic acids by shortening the window period, thereby offering blood centers a much higher sensitivity for detecting viral infections and reducing TT1. So NAT is highly beneficial in countries like India which has a high incidence and prevalence of transfusion transmitted infections. But NAT is restricted to a few blood banks in India since 2008 (less than 3%). NAT is expected to identify many NAT yield cases which are not detected by other serological tests. In this view as all our donors are undergoing NAT testing, so we want to project our data to show the efficiency of this test at our Sakra world hospital.

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