Abstract :
Background: Aim of any Transfusion is safe Transfusion. As per Honorable Supreme court guideline all TTIs must be screened for all registered blood banks across India. Blood banks in Odisha are equipped with screening facility to screen various transfusion transmissible diseases. Screening tests for these diseases are usually done by Rapid Test /Elisa Test.
Objective : In recent years, to reduce the window period of these diseases sophisticated testing methods like Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) has been introduced in many blood centers in India. In this context Govt. of Odisha has introduced NAT screening in selected Govt. blood banks of the state through public private partnership mode (PPP). The present study has been done to evaluate the benefit & limitation of NAT testing over serological tests.
Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective study carried out in the blood centre, VIMSAR, Burla over the period from June 2016 to November 2020, where all Elisa negative samples were subjected to NAT screening.
Results: On screening a total of 83,820 blood donations, 349, sero reactive donations were detected. Out of 83,471, sero negative donations, when subjected to NAT screening, 356 showed positive. Out of these 88 HBV, 12 HCV & 256 HIV cases were detected.
Conclusion: Implementation of NAT along with serological testing in blood bank centers all over India will be an important step towards providing safe blood, The PPP mode applied in our state can help expand coverage of NAT testing. But as it is not economical so stringent donor-deferral should be followed for selection of eligible donors.
Keyword :
Nucleic Acid Amplification Technology, Transfusion Transmitted Infection, Blood Donation, Screening, Public Private Partnership mode, Window Period