Impact on Patients

Infection with Babesia and Plasmodium species causes malaria symptoms such as haemolytic anaemia, thrombocytopenia and fever and chills, which can affect the health of transfusion recipients and lead to severe fatalities. Infection with Trypanosoma cruzi causes Chagas’ disease, which often develops into a severe acute phase infection in immunocompromised patients (of which many receive transfusions) causing fever, myocarditis and/or meningoencephalitis with a lethality of 10%.