Prevalence of Hepatitis B Infection in Children of Eastern Nile (Khartoum State)

Background: The global prevalence of Hepatitis B is important with>2 billion people exposed. The younger the person infected the more serious are the outcomes in term of complications. The World Health Organization estimated that 100 million persons have chronic hepatitis B in Africa.

Screening for Hepatitis B was introduced in Sudan in 2002 as part of the extended program of Immunization. In Sudan, Hepatitis B positivity ranged from 6.8% to 26.0%.

Methods: A screening for hepatitis B positivity was carried on a sample of 894 school -children (839 from Darfur and 55 from North State). The variables collected were age, area of residence, history of exposure to Hepatitis B, family past and parent history of exposure to risk factors classified as low, average and high. The data collected were summarized in term of frequency tables to estimate prevalence and chi-square tests were used to determine association between variables.

All statistical tests were considered significant when p< 0.05.

Results: The overall prevalence was 4.1% (37/894). Across the age groups the prevalence was higher (4.7%, 30/639) in those aged 10-14 years with no statistically significant difference between age group (p=0.381). No positive case was recorded in outside Darfur (0/55) whereas in Darfur the positivity was 4.6% (37/802). No statistically significant association was found between Hepatitis B positivity with past history (p=0.196), family (p=0.117) and parent’s (p=0.539) history and level of exposure to risk (p=0.09).

Conclusions: Our findings revealed a prevalence of 4.1% which was out of the ranged of the national prevalence of 6.5%-26.0%; this difference may be due to the impact of the extended program of immunization.