Surveillance épidémiologique des donneurs de sang homologues et risque résiduel en France entre 2001 et 2003

The national surveillance of French blood donors is performed by the Institut de Veille Sanitaire and the National Reference Center for Hepatitis B and C in transfusion in collaboration with the Etablissement Français du Sang and the Army blood center. The main objectives of this surveillance are to evaluate trends in prevalence and incidence rates of blood-borne infections in the blood donor population, to identify routes of contamination and to assess residual risk. This exhaustive surveillance also contributes to evaluate the blood donor selection and the impact of measures taken to prevent infections in the general population. The analyse of the database of all blood donations obtained from 2001 to 2003 has shown that prevalence rates were stable in the study period (0.60 per 104 donors for HIV, 8.0 per 104 donors for HCV, 1.8 per 104 first-time donors for HBs Ag and 0.56 per 104 donors for HTLV), The incidence rate of HIV and HBV (1 per 105 person-years) was three-times higher than for HCV (0.35 per 105 person-years) and eleven times higher than for HTLV (0.09 per 105 person-years). At least, the residual risk of transfusion-transmitted viral infections is very low: 1/3 150 000 donations for HIV, 1/10 000 000 donations for HCV and 1/640 000 donations for HBV. The yield of Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) is limited since only 2 donations for HIV and 3 for HCV which were negative for antibodies were discarded thank to the NAT.