Profile of Blood Donors and Reasons for Deferral at a District Hospital in North Goa

Abstract

Introduction: A blood transfusion is a life-sustaining procedure in several medical and surgical conditions. It is
vital that an adequate inventory of safe blood is established by implementing stringent donor selection criteria and
screening for transfusion transmitted infections by ultrasensitive methods of detection. Despite a huge population,
scarcity of blood lingers nationwide and it is important to analyse the varied reasons of deferrals in order to lessen
the deferrals in the future.
The aim of this paper is to scrutinise the demographic profile of blood donors and evaluate the patterns and
reasons for donor deferral at North Goa District hospital, India.
Materials and Methods: This is a retrospective study carried out at the Blood Centre , North Goa District
hospital,India,. All those who registered for donation between June 2022 till May 2023 were included in the study.
The donors were screened by a questionnaire followed by medical examination and were selected or deferred
based on the guidelines laid down by Drugs and Cosmetics Act,1940 and Directorate General of Health Services,
MoHFW,Govt of India1.2 .Data was collected using a proforma and analysed by SPSS software wherever indicated.
Results: During this time period, 2611 donors registered for blood donation, out of which 425 donors were deferred
due to diverse reasons. Most of the donors were voluntary donors(98.3%) of which majority were males(86.4%).
The commonest cause of deferral in males was high BP(24%) and high Hb(11.3%) whereas the commonest cause of
deferrals in females was low Hb (46.9%). Most of the donors were rejected due to temporary reasons(97.1%). The
commonest reason of permanent deferrals was a medical history of uncontrolled DM.