The Indian government yesterday announced that it was dropping its policy of unlinked anonymised HIV testing of all blood donations and introducing a recall system for HIV-positive donors.
Until now, blood donations found to be HIV-positive have been thrown away without informing the donors. From now on a confirmatory test will be carried out and an HIV-positive donor will be asked to attend for counselling.
Indian officials hope that the move will aid early identification of HIV infection, but speaking to the Times of India, epidemiologist L.M. Nath warned that individuals may come to use blood banks as HIV testing services in order to avoid the stigma of attending other clinics known to offer the test.