Ghana Blood Donor Screening Study: Infection Markers and Findings From IDWeek 2026

Blood donation can bring an unexpected health concern to light in someone who considers themselves healthy. At IDWeek 2026, held in Washington, DC, from October 21 to 24, Samuel Ntow, MBChB, MPH, discussed research examining that possibility among replacement blood donors at a rural hospital in Ghana. Of 5210 complete donor records analyzed, 954, or 18.3%, had at least 1 reactive screening marker for a transfusion-transmissible infection.

Ntow, who works as an infection preventionist (IP) at Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, Virginia, spoke with Infection Control Today® about the findings and their implications for screening and follow-up. His poster, “High Burden of Transfusion-Transmissible Infection Markers Among Blood Donors in a Replacement-Donor-Dependent Rural Hospital in Ghana, 2015–2025,” examined blood bank records from a hospital serving Axim and surrounding subdistricts.

“We discovered very soon after looking at the data that 1 in 5 of them had some infection,” Ntow said.

The poster provides an important qualification to that interview description: The results represent screening-marker reactivity, which may not indicate confirmed active infection. Nevertheless, the findings point to opportunities for further evaluation and linkage to care.

Understanding the Replacement Donor Setting

Ntow’s interest in the research connects his clinical background in Ghana with his enthusiasm for epidemiology and statistics. After moving to the US to join his family, he pursued further training at Johns Hopkins. At Carilion Clinic, he works with surgeons on surgical site infection prevention, while his current research focus is hospital-onset sepsis.

For this study, the researchers returned to blood bank data from Ghana. All donors in the dataset were replacement donors, meaning they donated on behalf of a specific patient, often a relative or friend. This differs from voluntary donation without a designated recipient. Ntow described the system as a response to limited blood availability. When a patient needs or is expected to need a transfusion, friends and family members are asked to donate on that person’s behalf.

The researchers retrospectively reviewed records from 2015 through 2025. Of 6492 valid dated records, 1282 were excluded because they were incomplete, leaving 5210 for analysis. Record completeness was 80.2%. The analysis included demographic information and screening results for hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, HIV, and TPHA, a syphilis screening marker. Donors had a median age of 29 years, with an interquartile range of 24 to 35 years. Most were male: 4892, or 93.9%, compared with 317 female donors, or 6.1%.

What the Screening Records Revealed

TPHA was the most frequently reactive marker, appearing in 420 records, or 8.1%. Hepatitis C markers were reactive in 295 records, or 5.7%, followed by hepatitis B in 240, or 4.6%, and HIV in 77, or 1.5%.

Most reactive records involved a single marker. Among the 954 donors with any reactive result, 885 had 1 reactive marker, accounting for 92.8% of that group. Another 61 had 2 reactive markers, 7 had 3, and 1 had all 4. The remaining 4256 records had no reactive markers. Annual results varied substantially. The proportion with any reactive marker was 8.6% in 2015, reached 26.4% in 2022, and was 18.6% in 2025. The researchers reported a higher overall burden after 2020 than in earlier years.

For Ntow, these findings create an opportunity to help donors understand their screening results and obtain appropriate follow-up. In the interview, he emphasized connecting people with primary care rather than allowing an unexpected finding to end with the donation encounter. The analysis also exposed gaps in the information available to guide broader public health efforts. “We didn’t know how many people in the community already had these disease conditions,” he said.

The poster’s limitations are important when considering that question. This was a single-center retrospective study restricted to replacement donors, with no voluntary-donor comparison group. Incomplete records were excluded, and the findings may not generalize beyond the hospital setting. The 18.3% result, therefore, should not be interpreted as community infection prevalence.

Building Connections Around Shared Challenges

The researchers called for stronger donor recruitment and screening strategies, supported by longitudinal surveillance, better data quality, and linkage to care. Ntow also described opportunities to engage government partners.

Presenting the findings at IDWeek allowed him to discuss those possibilities with colleagues from different countries and professional backgrounds. He recalled meeting attendees from Thailand and Cameroon, as well as professionals working in sterile processing and infection control.

“It’s easy to practice in silos, but it’s much more effective and efficient to practice in collaboration,” he said.

For Ntow, an informal conversation can connect someone facing a difficult problem with a colleague who has already addressed it. Those exchanges can become relationships that continue long after the meeting.

“You just have that personal interaction with a person,” he said.

His poster offered one starting point for those conversations: Routinely collected blood bank records that could help identify where more screening, better information, and follow-up care are needed.

Poster authors: Samuel Ntow, MBChB, MPH; Sylvester K. Onumah, MLS(ASCPi); and Terrylyna Baffoe-Bonnie, MD, MPH.