Abstract

 Background and Objectives

 To prevent the transmission of HIV through blood transfusion, blood transfusion centers have embarked on deferring high risk prospected donors by pre-donation consultation and screening blood donors to discard contaminated blood units. Since the deferal of high risk blood donors in consultation sessions in Iranian Blood Transfusion Organization plays a major role in the decrease of HIV risk in donated blood units and considering that high risk behaviours which expose people to HIV are usually deemed taboo making them abstain from speaking about, this study aims to evaluate impact of bar code in gaining the confidence of blood donors to address the questions with a special focus on HIV.

 Materials and Methods

 This study was descriptive. The physicians in blood centers were required to address deferred blood donors with questions about their history of intravenous drug use and unsafe sexual behaviors. Their responses were then reported by a bar-code method as positive or negative. Blood samples of such deferred blood donors were also tested for HIV. SPSS software was finally used for data analysis.

 Results

 Out of 36312 rejected blood donors, 349(1%) deferred had experienced both unsafe sexual behavior and intravenous drug use, 1735(4.8%) unsafe sexual behavior, 267(0.7%) intravenous drug use, and 33961(93.5%) considered themselves free from the both. Out of the 43 contaminated with HIV, 0% fell in the first group, 1(0.58%) in the second, 0% in the third, and 42(1.2%) in the fourth.

 Conclusions

 Since the recognized ways of HIV transmission in Iran are intravenous drug use (in 60.8% of cases) and unsafe sexual behavior (in 7.3% of cases), the high prevalence rate of HIV in rejected blood donors with none of these experiences strengthens the hypothesis that even the use of bar code method can not be effective in assuring them to disclose their confidential information.

 Key words : Intravenous drug abuse, Sexual behavior, HIV , Blood donation