Prevalence of hepatitis C virus antibody in healthy blood donors.

The present study was conducted to find the prevalence of HCV antibody in blood donors with an aim to provide safe blood for transfusion. A total of 44,086 blood samples from healthy blood donors was screened for HCV antibody by third generation ELISA assay and a prevalence of 0.53 per cent was found in our study. We suggest that routine screening of all donor blood should be done.