Abstract

Hepatitis infections are a global public health challenge involving the inflammatory condition of the liver. Transmission is a common occurrence and a potential risk especially in Sub-Saharan Africa which is an area of high endemicity. The objective of the present work was to investigate incidence of viral hepatitis infections in Africa. Literature search was performed using Pubmed, American society for microbiology (ASM) journals, Googlescholar and other sources to establish conclusions from the results of randomized and cross sectional clinical studies in Africa. The quality of studies was assessed using descriptive and inferential statistics with adjusted odds ratio of 95% confidence interval (CI) for the most prevalent hepatitis infection, ages of susceptible individuals and health status involved. The results revealed the most and least prevalent Hepatitis as B and A respectively. Seroprevalence was highest among women 21–25 years of age. About three-quarter (73.4%) were in their third trimester of pregnancy. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to identify factors that are significantly associated with maternofetal transmission which remains a contributor to high prevalence of chronic infection. We found that viral load and age showed significant contributions. The results showed high correlation between viral hepatitis and maternofetal transmission in pregnant women.

Key words: Viral hepatitis; maternofetal transmission; trimester