This prospective study was carried out between June 2005 and June 2006, to determine the prevalence and determinants of anaemia among pregnant women attending a tertiary Sahelian Hospital in Northeastern Nigeria. A total of 1,040 pregnant women enrolled at their first antenatal visit were monitored through pregnancy for anaemia. The overall prevalence of anaemia, malaria parasitaemia and schistosomiasis was 72.0%, 22.1% and 3.8%, respectively. Mild, moderate and severe anaemia constituted 31.8%, 39.4% and 0.9%, respectively. Anaemia was most common among the multipara and women presenting in late stages of pregnancy. More multipara and primigravidae had malaria parasitaemia than grandmultipara. Schistosomiasis, malaria infestation and a short birth interval as well as illiteracy are additional risk factors for anaemia in pregnancy. This study confirms the high prevalence of anaemia in pregnancy in this area. Appropriate intervention strategies are necessary to reduce the prevalence of anaemia.

. One thousand nine hundred and twenty nine voluntary group "O" blood donors (1609 males and 320 females, median age 26 years ± 7.6 SD) were screened for alpha-(anti-A) and beta-(anti-B) haemolysins using the standard tube technique at 37 degrees C for 1 hour. All samples showing haemolysis were titrated for anti-A and anti-B haemolysins. Results. The overall prevalence of haemolysins in group O donors was 55.4%. Prevalence of alpha-and beta-haemolysins only was 10.3% and 12.6%, respectively, while that of donors having both alpha-and beta-haemolysins in their sera was 32.5%. Visual titre of 8 was seen in 0.4% of lytic alpha-haemolysin and 0.2% of lytic beta-haemolysin whereas donors with both alpha-and beta-haemolysins had a titre of 1.8%. Lytic titre of 16 and 32 was very low in our donor population. Conclusion. This study has shown that although the prevalence of haemolysins is high in our voluntary group "O" donor population, the strength of the lytic antibodies is low. Therefore, despite the labour intensiveness of our haemolysis titration technique and the frequent transfusion of group O blood to certain recipients of blood group A, B, and AB in our environments, there is the need to routinely screen our donors for haemolysins in order to identify those posing the greatest risk to recipients. Further studies to determine episodes of clinically significant haemolysis in recipients of blood group O may be necessary.

BackgroundPost-transfusion hepatitis occurs even with stringent donor selection criteria and screening for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg). The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of antibody to hepatitis B core antigen (anti-HBc) in HBsAg-negative blood donors. MethodsThis was a cross-sectional study in which 200 HBsAg-negative blood donors were recruited. Screening for viral markers was done using both a rapid test kit and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for anti-HBc IgM. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of anti-HBc IgM was done by "capture" enzyme immunoassay using DIA.PRO HBc IgM test kits. The other viral markers were investigated using one step cassette style HBV tests. SPSS version 16 was used for data analysis. A P-value of 0.05 or less was considered significant. ResultsThere were 190 male (95%) and 10 female (5%) blood donors, with a mean age of 31.7 ± 7.9 years. The prevalence of anti-HBc IgM was 4%. The other viral markers (HBeAg, anti-HBeAg, anti-HBs and total anti-HBc) had a prevalence of 1.5%, 23%, 2.5%, and 32.5%, respectively.

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