GENOTYPIC AND ALLELIC FREQUENCIES OF THE ABO AND Rh-D BLOOD GROUPS AMONG PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS OF HIRNA, WEST HARARGHE ZONE OF OROMIA

This study was aimed at identifying the distribution patterns of ABO and Rh-D blood group system alleles among Hirna primary and secondary schools in 2015/16 academic year. Six hundred volunteer students were involved to determine the ABO and Rh-D blood group phenotypes, and to estimate allelic, and genotypic frequencies of the blood groups. The blood sample was collected by qualified laboratory technicians using the standard clinical procedures with sterilized needle from each student. The blood group of every individual was determined on the basis of agglutination reaction with anti-sera and recorded as blood group A + , B + , AB+ , O + or A- , B - , ABand O- . The study revealed that blood group O is at the highest frequency (47.83%) followed by blood group A (26.50%), B (20.00%) and the least percentage frequency was blood group AB (5.67%). The allelic frequency distribution of ABO revealed that i allele is highly frequent (0.687) followed by IA (0.176), and I B (0.137).The RhD distribution also varies among the four ABO blood groups. For Rh-D positive, O + was the highest frequent (44.33%) compared with A+ (24.17%), B+ (18.67%), AB+ (4.83%) and for RhD negative, O- was the highest frequent (3.5%) compared with A- (2.33%), B- (1.33%), and AB- (0.83%) respectively. The total percentage of Rh-D positive was 92% and that of Rh-D negative was found to be 8% as well as 'D' allele was highly frequent (0.7172) than 'd' allele (0.2828). The genotypic frequency for ABO blood types shows that ii is the most frequent (0.4714) followed IA I O (0.2415), IB I O (0.1888), I A I B (0.0484), IA I A (0.0309), and IB I B (0.019) respectively, for Rh-D ID I D is most frequent (0.5144) followed I D I d (0.406) and I d I d (0.0800). Generally, O blood phenotype is the highest frequent and AB blood phenotype is the least frequent in the study population