Geographical distribution of areas with a high prevalence of HTLV-1 infection

ECDC Technical Report<br> In line with ECDC’s recommendations provided in the ’Risk Assessment of HTLV-1/2 transmission by tissue/cell transplantation’ dated 14 March 2012, this Directive replaces the term ‘incidence’ with ‘prevalence’ in the description of endemic areas of HTLV-1/2 infection. According to the new requirements ‘HTLV-1 antibody testing must be performed for donors living in, or originating from high-prevalence areas or with sexual partners originating from those areas or where the donor’s parents originate from those areas’ and this applies to both donors of non-reproductive tissues and cells and reproductive cells. <br> ECDC contracted experts from the Institut Pasteur in Paris to systematically review the published evidence on the distribution of HTLV-1 infection prevalence throughout the world and to identify high-prevalence countries and areas.