Consensus recommendations on the diagnosis and treatment of hepatitis c virus infection in sub Saharan Africa

Abstract

According to the 2017 World Health Organization (WHO) global hepatitis report, there were a total of 1.75 million new HCV infections, worldwide in 2015, and the global prevalence of HCV infection was noted to be about 1% (71million). Of the 71million individuals living with HCV infection globally in 2015, about 11 million were from the African region.5 In the latest country-level HCV disease burden model developed by the Polaris Observatory HCV collaborators that estimated the prevalence of HCV infection in 113 countries, the global prevalence of viremic HCV infection in 2015 was found to be close to the WHO estimates, at 1.0% (71.1 million viremic HCV-infected individuals). The overall prevalence of viremic HCV infection in the sub-Saharan African region was found to be 4.6% (10.1million viremic HCV infected individuals). Four major sub-Saharan regions were included in this model, including–(1) Central sub-Saharan Africa; (2) East sub-Saharan Africa; (3) Southern sub-Saharan Africa (South Africa); and (4) West sub-Saharan Africa. The prevalence of viremic HCV infection in Central, West, Southern and East sub-Saharan Africa was found to be 2.1%, 1.3%, 0.7%, and 0.5%, respectively.6 A similar HCV prevalence pattern, with high rates in the Middle Africa region, and low rates in Southern Africa, was reported in another systematic review and meta-analysis of 184 nation-level estimations across Africa.7 Other systematic reviews and meta-analyses on the prevalence of HCV infection across countries in West and Central sub-Saharan Africa have also revealed a high seroprevalence of HCV in these regions.8,9