No abstract

Social and economic development, along with increased health care coverage, has caused a sharp increase in the clinical demand for blood in China. Whole blood collection has increased rapidly in the past decade but has failed to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand. Overall, the country's blood safety has been improved with 99% of whole blood donations collected from voluntary unpaid donors. However, the unmet clinical demand for blood and the increasing incidence of human immunodeficiency virus and syphilis in the general population pose new challenges to China's blood banking system. To ensure a safe and adequate blood supply, continued efforts are required to recruit and retain a sufficient number of low-risk voluntary blood donors, improve donor prescreening and blood testing process, ease donor restrictions, and strengthen patient blood management.

Anti-HCV EIA kits commonly used in Chinese donors screening demonstrate good correlation between S/CO ratios and the confirmed infection. For the Ortho third-generation HCV ELISA, the S/CO ratio of 3.8 determined by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is applicable to Chinese blood donors. The Chinese domestic EIA kits evaluated show a diverse range of threshold S/CO ratios.