Prevalence of hepatitis B and C among blood donors attending the National Blood Transfusion Center in Baghdad, Iraq from 2006-2009.

OBJECTIVES: To estimate the prevalence of hepatitis B and C among blood donors attending the National Blood Transfusion Center (NBTC) in Baghdad, Iraq from 2006-2009 and to compare the results with previous year's results and results from studies on a normal population, and to identify certain demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and residence of positive cases.

METHODS: This is a retrospective cross-sectional observational study. Monthly reports from the NBTC during the year 2006-2009 were collected. This study took place at Communicable Disease Control Center (CDC), Baghdad, Iraq in January 2010. Analysis of the reports regarding age, gender, and residence was carried out using Excel 2007.

RESULTS: The sample size was 495,648 blood donors. Out of them, only 3258 (0.6%) were positive for hepatitis B and 933 (0.3%) were positive for hepatitis C. The average prevalence of HBsAg was higher in men (0.7%) than women (0.5%) with no statistical significance (p=0.07) while the prevalence of anti-HCV was higher in women (0.4%) than in men (0.2%) with statistical significance (p=0.000). Residence distribution of the positive cases for HbsAg and Anti HCV Ab in both genders was found to be higher in urban areas than in rural areas. Regarding age distributions, most of the affected donors were between 20-40 years age.

CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that Baghdad is of low endemicity with hepatitis B and hepatitis C infection. Generally, men are affected more than women and urban areas more than rural areas. Further studies are needed to provide more details about the status of HBV and HCV infection in other provinces of Iraq. Results of these studies could be utilized to determine the most feasible and useful approaches for strengthening prevention and control activities.