Blood-borne germs not present during blood transfusion process: Expert

By Poojathmi Rivithma

Colombo, September 06 (Daily Mirror) -  The World Health Organization (WHO) high technology test methods confirm that blood-borne germs are not present during the blood transfusion process, Director of the National Blood Transfusion Service (NBTS), Dr. Lakshman Edirisinghe said.

He said that the WHO test methods are followed to confirm whether the blood donor is healthy or not.

Dr. Edirisinghe said that special high-tech tests are used to identify the donors' conditions caused by the five diseases, namely Malaria, Syphilis, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C and HIV AIDS.

He said the percentage of HIV AIDS in the world has increased at the level of 4% to 5% and stressed the need to test donors' conditions to prevent the risk of receiving blood from an infected voluntary donor.

However, Dr. Lakshman Edirisinghe mentioned that this is the most reliable method used by all the advanced systems in the world.