Assessment of HBsAg, Prevalence, Knowledge of Risk Factors and Prevention of Hepatitis B Infection among Patients Attending the Limbe Health district

Background Hepatitis B is a virus that attacks the liver and can cause both acute and chronic disease. The virus is most commonly transmitted from mother to child during birth, as well as through contact with infected human blood, being pricked with a contaminated needle, intimate contact with an infected person, oral, vaginal and anal sex and using a razor or any other personal item with remnants of infected fluid. Many people still leave with ignorance about this viral infection which leads to many deaths. This is therefore a major public health problem. This cross-sectional hospital-based study was carried out from April to June 2020 and participants were administered an open-ended questionnaire asking what they know about the risk factors and how they can prevent this viral infection. We collected blood samples from each participant and these samples were screened for the presence of HBsAg using a one-step commercial test strip. The questions answered by participants were graded using 1 as good knowledge 0.5 as intermediate knowledge and 0 as poor knowledge. Children age 0-14 years were considered as not knowledgeable. We observed that participants were affected with this virus despite having good, intermediate or poor knowledge and children age 0 to 14 who were considered not knowledgeable were still affected suggesting mother to child transmission. A greater Proportion of people where between 18-40 years (204 I.e. 68%) and the most affected aged group with 74 cases (36.27%). the most affected area was Mile 1, with 31(37.80%) cases from 82 participants and Bota with 25 (27.77%) cases from 90 respectively. Among the 300 participants 199 participants were negative for HBsAg and 101 participants were positive for HBsAg given a prevalence of 36.66%.