Emerging Infectious Disease and Transfusion Medicine: Time to take Action with Proactive Measures

Ángel Luis Pajares Herraiz*

DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2017.01.000167

Received: June 27, 2017   Published: July 03, 2017

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Abstract

One of the concerns throughout the history of transfusion medicine has been the transmission of infectious diseases through the transfusion of allogeneic blood. Since the identification of post transfusion hepatitis in the 1940s [1], the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s [2], the discovery of hepatitis C in 1989 and its role in blood donation and transmission of HCV [3], and most recently -between 1980 and 1996 the delivery of the variant of Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease by blood transfusion [4,5], transfusion medicine had to implement stronger and more secure measures in the selection of blood donors and in the diagnosis of Transfusion-transmissible diseases (TTD) in order to avoid post-transfusion transmission of infectious agents, mainly HBV, HCV and VIH.

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