Transmission of HIV Through Blood – How To Bridge the Knowledge Gap

Abstract

1.1 HIV and blood transfusion – The current state of the art Of all blood donations 65% are made in developed (very high human development index or VH-HDI) countries, home to just 25% of the world's population. In 73 countries, donation rates are still less than 1% of the population (the minimum needed to meet basic needs in a country). Of these, 71 are either developing (low HDI) or transitional (medium to high HDI) countries; 42 countries collect less than 25% of their blood supplies from the safest source: voluntary non-remunerated blood donors. However, less than 50% of these donors donates regularly, the other half just one time only. In 2007, 31 countries (19%) still reported collecting paid donations, which is more than 1 million donations in total, where 41 countries (25%) were not able to screen all blood donations for one or more of the following transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs) – HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and syphilis (WHO 2010a). Blood transfusion as a supportive haemotherapy contributes to saving lives and improving health, but millions of patients needing transfusion do not have timely access to or can afford safe blood. In 2007, 162 countries provided data to WHO on 85.4 million blood donations (World Health Organization [WHO] 2010a). These data come from countries that account for a total of 5.9 billion people, representing 92% of the global population. The report covers around 8,000 blood centres. In developed countries, the average annual collection per blood centre was 13,600 (range 49–289,075), in transitional countries 6,000 (range 20–499,212) and in developing countries 2,800 (range 114–23,251).