No abstract

error taken at 5% and expected deviation as 1% for HBV and 0.5% for HCV, a minimum sample size of 1120 for HBV prevalence study and 1521 for HCV prevalence study was obtained. The sample was selected from the study population of army units located in the same station by the method of multistage random sampling.A detailed questionnaire was developed to study the risk factors for transmission of HBV and HCV infections and was administered to all serving personnel during sample collection. RESULTSA total of 1511 samples were collected from serving soldiers and all of these, were tested for HBsAg and anti-HCV.HBV: Overall point prevalence of HBsAg positivity in serving soldiers was found to be 1.25% (95% CI = 0.69%-1.81%).HCV: Of the 1151 samples tested for anti-HCV, not even one tested positive.Questionnaire on likely risk factors of HBV infection were administered to 1511 serving soldiers; completed questionnaires were received from 1262 persons and these were used for analysis of results.Mean age of the responders was 31.3 years with SD of 5.3 (range 19-46 years). Around 97% responders were personnel below officer rank and 95.6% were educated more than primary level (Table 1).History of having taken injections from civil medical practitioners was observed to be a highly significant risk factor (P < 0.001) with OR = 10.22 (95% CI = 3.29-30.68), thus indicating that injections from civil increased the risk of infection by ten times (Table 2). Past history of surgery (OR = 5.24), undergoing dental procedure (OR = 3.17), habit of sharing razors (OR = 9.09) were observed to have increased risk of HBV infection with, however the risk was not statistically significant in the study group. DISCUSSIONFindings of the study indicate that over all seroprevalence of HBV infection among population of Armed Forces was 1.25%. This is lower than 2.4% calculated as true prevalence in non-tribal

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract