An international study on emerging arboviral infections and blood safety

Emerging and re-emerging arboviral infections are a risk to blood safety. We conducted an international survey on how blood establishments respond to current and future arbovirus threats.

A questionnaire on arbovirus donor deferral strategies, pathogen reduction, and donation screening was distributed to members of the International Society of Blood Transfusion working party on transfusion-transmitted infectious diseases. Data from 2024 were gathered and analyzed.

A total of 23 survey responses were received from 21 countries. This covered a population of 1.45 billion people and 29.9 million blood donations collected in 2024. All respondents applied travel-based donor deferrals, whereas pathogen reduction, implemented by half of the respondents, was mostly applied for a selection of plasma and platelet donations. West Nile virus (WNV) was the only arbovirus blood donations were screened for by nine respondents from eight countries, with 256 donations confirmed as WNV RNA-positive in 2024. No transfusion-transmitted WNV infections were reported.

Blood safety measures remain limited and unevenly distributed globally, and in their present form, are unlikely to provide protection against the growing range of emerging arboviruses. Donor deferral may not always be a sustainable blood safety strategy alone for all blood operators, due to large-scale outbreaks associated with these viruses. While pathogen reduction methodologies are being developed to be applied to all blood components, risk assessments for (re)-emerging arboviruses, such as dengue, chikungunya, and Zika viruses, should be performed to determine if additional mitigation, such as blood donation screening, is warranted.