Al- Anbar Medical Journal

Abstract

Background: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections have been recognized as an emerging problem in high risk groups including hospital health care workers (HHCW) and their prevalence varies considerably among different areas of the world. This study has been undertaken to shed light on the prevalence of these viruses among hospital staff in addition to prevention of further transmission of these viruses in such setting.
Methods: The prevalence of hepatitis B and C infection in 422 healthcare workers was estimated on poolls of sera collected during immunization against hepatitis B by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Healthcare workers were arranged according to the age, sex and nationality.
Results: The prevalence of HBV among HHCW was 3 out of 422 (0.94%) which was significantly higher than in control (0.2%),also prevalence of HCV among HHCW was 3 out of 422 (0.71%) which was significantly higher than in control ,in both estimations no female were positive. All HCV positive cases were of Egyptian nationality.
Conclusions: A relatively high positivity rate was found among HHCW as compared to control. These results were in agreement with previous reports affirming that HHCW are at risk for infection with both HBV and HCV via exposure to infected blood or body fluids.