Impact of counseling on temporarily deferred donor in a tertiary care hospital, central India: A prospective study

Background: Donors disqualified or rejected from donating blood are known as “deferred” donors. Blood donors are deferred for various reasons. Donors are deferred either temporarily or permanently. To make blood transfusion safe for the patients, many safety measures are undertaken, and the most important is a selection of the suitable blood donors. The rate and reasons of deferral differ from region to region and one center to the other. Aim: The aim of this study is to find out the impact of counseling on temporary donors deferral. Materials and Methods: A total of 271 donors is deferred against 10,853 blood donors recruited on the basis of clinical history and brief medical examination by medical officer during the period of 19 months from 1st of November 2009 to 31st May 2011. Those who were deferred temporarily during this period were counseled regarding the importance of blood donation and asked them to recruit after removal of the temporary causes. Follow-up of these temporarily deferred donors was done for 1-year. During this period, data collected were analyzed after 1-year of follow-up. Result: Incidence of donor deferral in our study was low. Most common reasons for the donor deferral in our study were alcohol consumption, followed by anemia and then, history of sexual exposure. A total of 124 temporarily deferred donors were recruited for blood donation. Conclusion: Voluntary blood donors are the backbone of blood bank. Deferral of the donors creates negative feelings about blood donation. Education, motivation, and treatment of these deferred donors due to anemia or other temporary deferrals are important aspects in blood banking and hence that these donors can be recruited again. Thus, effective measures need to be initiated to find out the issue of lost donors in terms of numbers and reasons. Hence, it is important to retain the stock of precious blood units lost due to these temporary deferrals.