India's health ministry last week announced that blood donors found to be HIV positive would be told of their infection and asked to seek confirmatory tests and counselling.
This will end the existing policy of anonymous testing in which blood infected with HIV is discarded without repeating the test and without informing the donor.
However, doctors working in blood transfusion services caution that the order will be “hard to implement” given the current decentralised, fragmented state of blood banking services in India.
Public health experts in the country have been concerned that HIV positive donors have been living without knowledge of their infection and possibly transmitting it to their sexual partners. India's National AIDS Control Organisation has estimated that India has nearly four million people infected with HIV, 90% of whom are aged 15-45 years.