One in five adult Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar camps are infected with hepatitis C virus, according to a recently published study.
The “High Prevalence of Hepatitis B and C Virus Infections Among Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh: A Growing Concern for the Refugees and the Host Communities” conducted by the National Liver Foundation of Bangladesh (NLFB) was published in Clinical Liver Disease, the journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases in January this year.
Hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV), often called the "silent killers", cause about 1.1 million annual deaths globally. Liver cancer is the third leading cause of cancer deaths in Bangladesh, said lead author and NLFB founder Prof Mohammad Ali.
In 2017 and 2019, NLFB screened 300 pregnant Rohingya women and 2,000 refugees and found that more than one in five adult Rohingyas had been infected with HCV and 26% of adult females tested positive for anti-HCV.
Pregnant women had a high prevalence of HBsAg and anti-HCV positive tests with potential for perinatal transmission to their infants. “This was alarming,” said Prof Ali, one of the seven recipients of the Hepatitis Elimination Champion 2021 Award.
Hepatitis B was found in 9% male, 5% female, and 3% pregnant women. Among all age groups, HCV was found in 11% of refugees and HBV in 4%.
HCV prevalence among Rohingyas, 18 times higher than in Bangladesh’s general population, is likely to pose challenges to the healthcare system.
“Urgent national measures should be taken to prevent the spread of these viral infections to the host community,” said Prof Ali, who performed Bangladesh’s first successful liver transplant in 2010.
