[Infectious markers among blood donors in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)].

In sub-saharian Africa, two factors account for the difficulties encountered to reach optimal blood safety: high frequency in the general population of various infections of which some are transmissible by blood transfusion and a still insufficient proportion of voluntary donors which constitute the safest group. The Kisangani transfusion center in DRC does not escape from this rule since in addition to voluntary blood donors (29.2%), its blood supply is mainly assured by family (or replacement) donors (69.2%). Persistence of a few remunerated donors (1.6%) was also noted at the period of the study. In this study, we determined seroprevalence of HIV, HBV and of syphilis infections in these three categories of donors and defined their characteristics by a retrospective analysis carried out on 3.390 subjects between January 2003 to December 2004. It revealed that 4.7% of the donors were positive for HIV, 5.4% for HBV and 3.7% for syphilis. There were significant differences according to studied groups : voluntary blood donors (n=989; HIV+ = 2.2%; VHB+ =3%; syphilis+ = 1.1%), family donors (n = 2.345; HIV+ = 4.6%; HBV+ = 4.9%; syphilis+ = 3.6%) and remunerated donors (n=56; HIV=50%; HBV+ = 64.3%; syphilis+ = 53.6%). These results indicate that it is necessary to intensify promotion of voluntary donation by a policy of information and education and to abolish practice of remunerated donation. Within the limits of possible, family donation should be gradually discouraged.