Hepatitis-B infection screening is an important component of blood safety programme and no blood is issued for transfusion without testing for five transfusion transmittable diseases e.g. hepatitis-B, Hepatitis-C, HIV, Malaria and Syphilis. India, with a carrier rate of 4%, contributes nearly 10% of the HBV carriers in the world. In India with 25 million live births each year, nearly 1 million HBV infections are added to the HBV pool yearly, contributing to its rapid expansion. A study of voluntary blood donors for Hepatitis B in the state of Uttar Pradesh, revealed that 2.3 percent of the donor are hepatitis carriers and 94.7% of them are males. Since the seropositivity trends in donors of state blood bank in Himachal Pradesh were not known, we reviewed secondary data of state blood bank Shimla to: (i) estimate prevalence of Hepatitis-B infection in healthy blood donors, (ii) describe time, place and person characteristics of HBV prevalence and (ii) recommend measures to reduce it. ...
