The Indraprastha Apollo Hospital is planning to initiate a multi site project to study the prevalence of HIV infection among blood donors in the country, by February 2004. Dr RN Makroo, director, department of transfusion medicine, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, Delhi, revealed this to Pharmabiz, while he was in Pune to attend the national workshop on stemcell transplantation and blood component manufacture, held at AFMC.

He believes, in India it is not possible to get a 'zero risk' blood from any of the1832 blood banks existing in the country. Dwelling on the objective of the multisite project, he said, "The project will run for six months in which we aim to test 30,000-40,000 blood samples from all over the country. This will reveal the HIV prevalence in regular blood donors and replacement donors.''

The findings of the study, he said, would determine if it is mandatory to expose blood samples to window period detection test i.e. Nucleic Acid Test. -NAT. Dr Makroo claimed that with his study report on the prevalence of Hepatitis-C virus in the country, that he submitted to the government, the window period test for the detection of HCV was made mandatory, which is currently estimated to have the prevalence rate of 0.4-1.5 per cent among blood donors.

Presently out of 1000 blood donors in the country 2-3 donors are HIV infected which means the prevalence of HIV infection amongst blood donors is 0.2-0.3 per cent. He lamented that though the current HIV prevalence rate is alarmingly high, the window detection tests are still not made mandatory to ensure safety of the samples.

He further pointed out the widow period for transfusion associated infection especially HIV, HCV and HBV have nearly closed with the introduction of NAT in blood screening program in developed countries. "The regulatory authorities medicolegal environment in developed countries has provided the impetus for introducing these expensive assays to attain an increment in blood safety. In the developing countries only infectious disease are screened,'' he said. However it is important to balance blood safety with the need to maintain adequate and affordable blood supply, he added.

He urged the government regulators, test kit manufactures and medical scientists to address the issue of blood safety in the country and also opined that the healthy citizens in the country should consider it as their ethical responsibility to donate blood regularly as it is done in the UK and US.