Hepatitis: Knowledge and Awareness among the Infected Population

Hepatitis viruses are serious global public health problem and rapidly spreading in the developing countries due to factors like illiteracy, lack of health education, poverty. The aim of this study was to assess the level of knowledge and awareness of hepatitis infected people toward the disease, its consequences, routes of transmission of virus and preventive measures including vaccination. This cross-sectional study was carried out in the Department of Microbiology of Dhaka Medical Collage, Dhaka, Bangladesh from February to August 2013 among 2254 male jobseekers to Malaysia. History was taken and information was collected from HBsAg and anti-HCV positive persons by a predesigned questionnaire. Prevalence of hepatitis B virus infection in adult population was 2.35% and appears to be on decline and prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection was 0.13% that is still low in Bangladesh. No significant relationship was found between the demographic profile like religion, locality, occupation of the study population and hepatitis infection. In majority of the positive jobseekers, routes of transmission of viruses were not well established. Among infected population about 90% had educational status below secondary level, they were from low income group, and 60% of them were unemployed. Three fourth of them did not have proper knowledge about the disease, only about 10% of them properly knew about routes of transmission of hepatitis viruses and 91% did not have adequate knowledge about the preventive measures including vaccination. Knowledge about hepatitis was poor among infected population and they were not much aware about the disease; so measures should be taken to create awareness among the population about hepatitis and the preventive measures to halt the transmission of such infections.