Introduction:

Chagas Disease, also known as American Trypanosomiasis, is a public health problem. It is estimated that in the world there are between 6 and 7 million people infected with Trypanosoma cruzi, most of them in Latin America.

Objectives:

To identify the prevalence of Trypanosoma cruzi infection in donors from a blood bank in the department of Boyacá 2016-2018.

Materials and methods:

Retrospective-descriptive study carried out in 25,920 blood donors from the department of Boyacá (Colombia). The source of information was secondary. The prevalence of Trypanosoma cruzi infection was determined and compared according to sex, age group and type of donor through frequency analysis.

Results:

9187 donors were evaluated during 2016; 8,517 in 2017 and 8,216 in 2018, of which 56.1% were female and 43.9% male. The prevalence of Trypanosoma cruzi infection was 0.17% in screening and 0.08% with confirmatory tests of which 70.0% were women, 85.0% first-time volunteer donors, the range of The age at which the highest prevalence of this serological marker was found was 41 to 50 and 51 to 65 years with 35.0% each. The prevalence of Chagas infection showed a statistically significant association with age (p <0.05).

Conclusions:

Blood banks turn out to be one of the sources of information available to monitor the behavior of Chagas disease and evaluate decision-making in public health, taking into account the characteristics of the disease in which the majority of cases they are asymptomatic and without clinical compromise.

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