Background: Blood transfusion is a liquid organ transplant and involves transfer of biological material from man to man. According to NACO guidelines, the whole blood or components from any unit that tests positive should be discarded. Preventing transmission of these infectious diseases through blood transfusion presents one of the greatest challenges of transfusion medicine. Although HCV is endemic worldwide, there is a large degree of geographic variability in its distribution. The epidemiology of hepatitis C in India has not been studied systematically. Most of the studies of the prevalence of hepatitis C have been based in blood banks with the assumption that the blood donors are a surrogate for the population at large. HCV infection in India has a population prevalence of around 1.5 %. As the screening for HCV has been made mandatory since June 2001, information on HCV infection among blood donors is sketchy and only few studies available. Hence this study is undertaken to find out the to find and compare seroprevelence of HCV transfusion transmissible infection among voluntary and replacement blood donors and know demographic profile of donors with respect to age and sex. Materials And Methods: The study was done in Blood bank of S.N Medical College, Bagalkot from July 2012 to June 2013. The blood units were collected from voluntary and replacement donors. Sample collection: Two ml of blood sample was collected in labeled pilot tube at the time of collection of blood from donor tubing of blood bag the sample was further centrifuged at 3500 rpm for 5 minutes to obtain clear non hemolyzed serum. The samples were tested for HBV. Any donor meeting all criteria’s for eligibility of blood donation as mentioned in SOP, Blood Bank, S. N.Medical College, Bagalkot. Any donor not fulfilling the criteria was excluded. Screening for HCV was done by Rapid test (Rapid diagnostics-J-Mitra & Co) and confirmed by HCV MICROELISA. Results: A total number of 8187 donor’s blood units were screened. Replacement donors constituted 91.13% and remaining 8.7% were voluntary donors. The donor’s age ranged between 18-60 years with majority (73.96%) in the range of 18-35 years. 97.39% donors were males and female donors constituted only 2.61%. The seroprevelence of HCV was 0.20% in total donors and all the positive donors were replacement donors and males. Conclusion: The risk of TTI cannot be eliminated completely even after mandatory testing of blood units because of risk associated with donations during window period. With advent of nucleic acid amplification techniques (NAT) western countries have decreased the risk of TTI to a major extent. But the cost effectiveness of the NAT is poor. Its high cost is of concern especially in economically restricted countries. Our study showed that the seroprevelence of TTI was more in replacement donors compared to voluntary donors. However it was statistically not significant. Since all the seropositive blood units were from replacement donors and none of screened blood units from voluntary donors showed Serporositivity, the study suggests the need for collection of blood from voluntary donors. There should be an establishment of nationally coordinated blood transfusion services
