HIV prevalence among blood groups of blood donors in Nakasero Blood Bank, Kampala Uganda

Abstract

Introduction Blood donation saves millions of lives and blood transfusion plays an important role in the supportive care of medical and surgical patients but unsafe transfusion practices also put millions of people at risk of transfusion-transmissible infections. The objective of this study was to investigate HIV infection among blood donors in Nakasero blood bank Kampala Uganda. Methods The study was a retrospective cross sectional study, that involved review of records of both electronic and hard copies of blood donation between the ages 18 to 49 of people who donated blood in the period of January 2016 to December 2017. Independent variables included age, sex, and residences, and dependent variables included HIV status and blood group type. A data extraction form was used to include data from both electronic database and hard copy registers. All analyses were done using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software version 18.0. Chi-square was used to test association between categorical variable while two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare means of continuous variables. Results: Of the 200 seropositive donors, the median age was 27 and 140 (70%) were male. The prevalence of HIV infection for blood groups O, A, B AB were: 89 (44.5%), 55 (27.5%), 41 (20.5%), 10 (5%), respectively. There was no statistical relationship found between ABO blood group and HIV infection. Conclusion There is need to create a bigger blood group database for the seropositive population, to know any probable association between blood group and HIV infection and this would play a vital role in guiding transfusion services and future research and also help substantiate any possible association between blood groups and HIV infection.