Prevalence Determination and Trend Analysis of Major Transfusion Transmissible Infections Among Blood Donors in Nairobi Regional Blood Transfusion Centre

Abstract

Background: Blood is one of the therapeutic products for terminal ailments and most medical emergencies in hospital situations involve blood transfusion as utmost remedy, however, it has the risk of transfusion-transmissible infections (TTIs) such as Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Hepatitis B virus (HBV), Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and Syphilis. Objective: This study was undertaken to determine the prevalence of, trends of and sociodemographic characteristics associated with TTIs among blood donors from the Regional Blood Transfusion Centre at Nairobi. Design and site: This study used a retrospective cross-sectional analytical design based on the secondary analysis of blood donors’ data between July 2017 and June 2018 obtained from the RBTC database at Nairobi. Methods: Information on 17,193 blood donors were obtained from the RBTC database at Nairobi. The statistical analysis involved the use of generalized linear models, with Poisson regression and log-link function. The p-values were calculated at < 0.05 and adjusted prevalence ratios did at 95% confidence intervals. Time trends were developed to demonstrate the changes, if any, in the prevalence of TTIs. The autoregressive integrated moving-average process was developed to detect changes in the prevalence of TTIs. Results: Only 515 (3.0%) blood donors were seropositive for at least one TTI. The prevalence of HIV was 0.49%; HBV, 1.29%; HCV, 0.61%; Syphilis, 0.65%. Multivariate analysis showed that students had a prevalence that was almost 100% lower than and 3.7 times greater than that of people in business (p<0.001) for each of HIV, HBV, and HCV, and for syphilis respectively. Similarly, rural, slum and urban blood donors had a prevalence of HIV, HBV and HCV that was almost 100% lower than that of blood donors in college (p<0.001). Subsequently, moderate oscillation periods occurred. Time series revealed that TTIs prevalence fluctuates with no evidence of seasonality but instead random walks with uncorrelated white noise process with mean for HIV, HCV, syphilis, and zero-mean for HBV. Conclusion: The TTIs prevalence was considerably high and fluctuated with time. The data supports robust blood donor selection, serological screening and blood supply monitoring.