Nearly 3,000 thalassemic children in India get infected with HIV virus annually due to inefficient testing during a crucial blood transfusion process.

A large majority of the blood banks make use of ELISA test which has been proven not to be 100 percent accurate rather than the advanced Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) which can identify the HIV virus.
Says J S Arora, general secretary of the National Thalassemia Welfare Society, “The problem lies with the outdated blood testing method we have. Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) of donors' blood needs to be implemented in all the blood banks as the technique reduces the window period or period of detection of HIV and other viral infections.”
Source-Medindia