Blood Supply Testing for Infectious Diseases

Blood transfusion is a lifesaving intervention that has an essential role in patient management within health care systems. It is the responsibility of governments to ensure that safe and sufficient supplies of blood are available and accessible to all patients requiring transfusion. The provision of safe and efficacious blood for transfusion involves a number of processes, including assessment of the suitability of prospective blood donors to donate blood, blood collection, processing, and testing of blood donations, and the issue of blood and its transfusion to the patients. While blood transfusion can be lifesaving, there are associated risks, particularly the transmission of blood-borne infections including human immunodeficiency virus and hepatitis B and C viruses. Screening for transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs) to exclude blood donations at risk of transmitting infection from donors to recipients is a critical part of the process of ensuring that transfusion is as safe as possible. Effective screening for evidence of the presence of the most common and dangerous TTIs can reduce the risk of transmission to very low levels. Blood transfusion services should therefore establish efficient systems to ensure that all donated blood is correctly screened for the appropriate TTIs and that only nonreactive blood is issued for transfusion to patients.