Abstract

Background: Pregnant women infected with hepatitis B virus (HBV) have a high rate of mother to child transmission and with adverse effects on their children. Recently, pregnant women were screened for HBV infection at a limited urban health facility of Ethiopia. The trend of HBV infection prevalence from year to year is unknown. Hence, the aim of this study was to determine the trend in sero-prevalence of HBV infection among pregnant women at a Referral Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia, over a period of five years (2015 to 2019).
Methods: The five year retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted from January 2015 to December 2019. A data extraction sheet was used to collect data on the HBV status of pregnant mothers from the Felege Hiwot comprehensive referral hospital’s registration book.
Results: A total of 7,445 pregnant women were screened for HBV infection resulting in 305 (4.1%) infected women. The mean age of the participants was 25 years with a range of 16 - 42 years old. The highest numbers of partic-ipants were in the age group of 25 - 29 years old (2,945; 39.5%) followed by ≥ 30 years old (2,492; 33.5%). The highest prevalence rate of HBV was observed in the age group of ≥ 30 years old (126; 5.1%) followed by 25 - 29 years old (112; 3.8%).
Conclusions: Even though the numbers of pregnant women screened for HBV infection is decreasing, the overall trend of HBV infection prevalence increased from 2015 to 2019.

DOI: 10.7754/Clin.Lab.2023.230520