[The risk of malaria transmission by blood transfusion at Cotonou, Benin]

The risk of transmission of infectious agents by blood transfusion is a permanent preoccupation for diseases that we do not know how to cure, such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and AIDS. However, few studies have been carried out concerning the risks of transmitting curable infectious diseases, such as malaria. We carried out a cross-sectional study of 355 healthy blood donors in the rainy season, in which we used thick and thin blood film smears to screen for malaria. We found that 33.5% of donors harbored trophozoites and were therefore capable of transmitting malaria via blood donation. There were 1,000 to 4,760 parasites per microliter of blood and there was no relationship between the load of parasitized red blood cells and clinical malaria. Plasmodium falciparum was the most common species identified (96.63% of cases). The results confirm that it is vital, in this age of resistance to anti-malaria drugs and HIV, to screen blood donations systematically. Patients receiving transfusions should be given anti-malaria treatment and donors should be encouraged to sleep under treated mosquito nets.