• J Formos Med Assoc · May 2024

    Dual strategy involving hospital-based study and community-based screening to eliminate hepatitis C in remote areas.

    • Chien-Hung Chen, Nien-Tzu Hsu, I-Chun Chen, Te-Sheng Chang, Shing Cheng, Shi-Yann Cheng, Hung-Ming Chen, Ming-Rong Harn, Chen-Kou Liu, Mao-Ting Yang, Shih-Lung Lu, Chun-Mei Tseng, and Sheng-Nan Lu.
    • Department of Medicine, National Taiwan University Cancer Center, Taipei City, Taiwan; Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital and National Taiwan University College of Medicine, Taipei City, Taiwan.
    • J Formos Med Assoc. 2024 May 1; 123 (5): 613619613-619.

    Background/Purpose: To achieve the World Health Organization goal of eliminating viral hepatitis by 2030, a key strategy in resource-limited areas is to identify the areas with high prevalence and to prioritize screening and treatment intervention. We hypothesized that a hospital-based laboratory database could be used to estimate the township- and village-specific anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) prevalence.MethodsYunlin County Public Health Bureau has been collecting anti-HCV test data from eight major hospitals. Township- and village-specific screening testing rates and anti-HCV prevalence were calculated for residents 40 years or older. A township with a wide range of anti-HCV prevalence rates was selected for outreach universal screening and for validating the village-specific prevalence of anti-HCV in the analysis of the data from the hospitals.ResultsThe overall anti-HCV screening testing rate in Yunlin County was 30.4 %, whereas the anti-HCV prevalence rate for persons 40 years or older was 15.4 %. The village-specific anti-HCV prevalence rates ranged from 3.8 % to 85.8 %. Community-based screening was conducted in Kouhu Township. The village-specific anti-HCV prevalence rates ranged from 0 % to 18.8 %. Three of the four villages had the highest village-specific anti-HCV prevalence in the community-based study and the hospital-based study. Additionally, 95.8 % of the new HCV cases detected by universal screening received anti-HCV therapy.ConclusionThe hospital-based database provided a framework for identifying the villages with high anti-HCV prevalence. Additionally, community-based universal screening should be prioritized for villages with high prevalence in hospital-based databases.Copyright © 2024 Formosan Medical Association. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…