Bolstering blood safety: Revealing six years of vigilance-NAT testing trends in infectious markers among tertiary care centre blood donors

Background: Transfusion transmitted disease was a major risk factor for Blood Transfusion. TTIs (HBV, HCV, HIV, Syphilis, Malaria) screening by ELISA was done mandatory for screening of Blood donors. In order to provide additional layer of safety IDNAT was implemented nowadays in few blood centres to increase the safety of blood transfusion. Recent studies shown that TTIs Risk was high in developing Countries. Aim and Objective: This study was done to study the seroprevalence of TTI and estimate the benefits of implementing IDNAT in blood Donor Screening.   Materials and Methods: In this study data collection was done around 6 years. This study included 11,641 blood donors during study period.  Among the donors, 9876 (84%) volunteered, while 1765 (15%) were replacement donors. Result: The TTI seropositivity rate stood at 0.98% (n=114), with a prevalence of 0.67% for HBV, 0.21% for HCV, 0.06% for HIV, 0.04% for Syphilis, and 0% for Malaria. The NAT yield for HBV was determined to be one, while the yields for HCV, HIV, Syphilis, and Malaria were also calculated and found to be Zero. Decreasing Trend of TTI was seen from 2016-2022. Conclusions: Our study documented low Prevalence of TTIs, low participation of female donors and decreasing trend of TTIs. The recommendations include the Promotion of enrolment of female donors and screening of donated blood through highly sensitive screening method (IDNAT).