Prevalence of HCV infection among health care employee at Al Azhar University Hospitals in Cairo, Egypt

Abstract EN

HCV-infection is the main cause of chronic liver disease among Egyptians, the most common-ly infected population with HCV genotype 4.

Evidences of HCV-transmission that are associated with health-care settings have consistently accumulated over recent years worldwide.

Therefore, healthcare workers (HCWs) are the target population of the current study.

The study evaluated prevalence of HCV-infection among different sectors of HCWs at Al Azhar University Hospi-tals.

The population (n=239) were divided into four groups.

G1(n=59) included healthy controls who were not working at hospitals.

Other subjects (n=180) consisted three equal groups (2, 3 & 4) who were working at Al-Azhar University Hospitals.

Respectively, workers, nurses and phy-sicians presented group 2, 3 & 4 (n=60 each) from different hospital wards.

Based upon duration of employment at hospitals, subjects in each of the last three groups were subdivided into 3 sub-groups (n=20 each).

Risk-factors that were thought to have an impact on acquisition of HCV-infection were evaluated.

The overall prevalence of HCV infection in study populations was 21.34% with the highest rate in nurses (38.3%) and workers (20%) when compared to controls (15.3%) and physicians (11.7%; P<0.05).

The significantly increased HCV infection in nurses compared to physicians (P<0.05) was found during all employment periods.

Needle stick injury, incidental exposure to blood and body fluid splashes were respectively prominent risk-factors among nurses (70%, 60% & 35%) and workers (35%, 21.7% & 18.3%).

Nurses and hospital workers had high prevalence of HCV infection.

Long duration of nurse employment was associated with increased frequency of needle sticks and subsequently high prevalence of HCV-infection, but not physicians.