Prevalence of Viral Hepatitis Infections in Babylon Province, Iraq, during The Interval from 2014 to 2018

Abstract

Background: Viral hepatitis disease is a major public health problem affecting hundreds to millions of individuals worldwide. The most widely recognized types of viral hepatitis are six distinct types of hepatitis virus, referred to as A, B, C, D, E, and G which may appear in an acute or chronic form. The aim of current study was to to estimate the prevalence of hepatitis A, B and C virus infections over the last five years ago from 2014 to 2018 and to determine the prevalence associated with age and gender of patients in Babylon province, Iraq, through analyzing data by descriptive statistics approaches. Methods: Current study involved 2110 positive cases who were diagnosed as having hepatitis A, Band C virus infections of age groups ranging from (< 1 to ≥ 20) years of both genders (1184 males and 926 females). Patients' information was gathered retrospectively from the medical records at The Central Public Health Laboratory of Babylon province for the period between 2014 and 2018. Results and Conclusion: The study results showed that 1868 cases (88.5%) out of 2110 cases had Hepatitis A Virus while 205 cases (9.7%) had Hepatitis B Virus and 37 cases (1.8%) had Hepatitis C Virus. Also, the highest number of cases ( 653) of viral hepatitis infections was recorded in 2015 and the lowest number (307) was recorded in 2014. On the other hand, it has been discovered that the highest total number of cases was for Hepatitis A Virus cases (576) cases, followed by Hepatitis B Virus (60) cases and then Hepatitis C Virus (17) cases for year 2015. The analysis of results depicted the relationship between types of viral hepatitis infections and years of prevalence and revealed a highly significant association at Pvalue <0.01. Besides, the results showed that both genders were influenced with viral hepatitis, but males were more influenced gender (56.1%) than females (43.9%). The analysis depicted the relationship between types of viral hepatitis infections and gender of patients and revealed that they affected both genders significantly at Pvalue <0.01.