Objective   To study the impact of blood bank management, blood component and other related factors on getting HIV infection among former paid blood donors in China.

  Methods   According to HIV testing strategy Ⅱ recommended by UN AIDS/WHO, all former paid blood donors of ZY village in the rural central China were asked to participate in HIV antibody screening and to finish questionnaire from October 2002 to March 2003.

  Results   91 out of 462 former paid blood donors were found HIV antibody positive, and the HIV prevalence was 19.70% with the confidence interval from 16.17% to 23.62%.The former blood donors had commercially donated either whole blood or plasma in 75 blood banks, which were grouped into following 5 categories according to management type: privacy-owned blood bank(PBB), local country-level government-owned blood bank(LCGBB), out country-level government-owned blood bank(OCGBB), district-level government-owned blood bank(DGBB)and military blood bank(MBB).The significant difference was found between different types of blood bank with regard to the frequency of donating either whole blood or plasma.Univariate analysis showed that no HIV infection was found among those who had commercially donated whole blood in all types of blood bank, the HIV prevalence among the donors who donated plasma only in PBB was significantly higher than that only in LCGBB, and the HIV prevalence only in LCGBB was significantly higher than that only in OCGBB.Non-conditional logistic regression showed that donating plasma either in PBBor in LCGBB was the risk factor for getting HIV infection, with adjusted OR value of 2.72 and 1.12 respectively.The HIV prevalence among those donating plasma in PBBand in LCGBB were 72.73% and 20.66% respectively.

  Conclusion   The risk factors of getting HIVinfection among commercially paid blood donors were plasma donation either in PBB or in LCGBB.Health authorities should find out these "problem blood banks", then identify the HIV-infected blood donors who donated plasma in "problem blood bank", which would benefit for estimating the number of HIV-infected donors and setting priority of intervention.