• 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.

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