Hepatitis B virus among refugees in low- and middle-income countries
Citation: Lee C, Emeto TI, Walsh N. Prevalence of hepatitis B virus amongst refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons in low- and middle-income countries: A systematic review. Journal of Viral Hepatitis. 2023;30(1):4–18.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: The authors reported that they had no external funding for this review.
What is this? In this systematic review, the authors searched for the prevalence of Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) among refugees, asylum seekers, or internally displaced people in low- and middle-income countries. They restricted their searches to articles published in English that measured HBV prevalence using Hepatitis B surface antigen or HBV DNA. The authors searched in December 2021 and included 28 studies from Bangladesh (2), Cameroon (1), Ethiopia (1), India (1), Iran (1), Iraq (1), Nepal (1), Nigeria (1), Pakistan (6), Rwanda (1), Thailand (3), Turkey (7), and from multiple countries (2).
What was found: The prevalence of HBV in refugees, internally displaced people, and asylum seekers in low- and middle-income countries varied from 1% to 60%. Reasons for the higher prevalence of HBV included unsafe medical treatments, mother-to-child transmission, low immunisation coverage, barriers to healthcare, and high baseline prevalence in the country of origin.
Implications: Because of the variability in their findings, the authors suggested that public health approaches to address HBV be tailored to the health status and needs of local refugee populations in low- and middle-income countries.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence, gender, sex, education, and personal characteristics.
This summary was prepared by Isabelle Tahmazian, checked by Sneha Bhadti, and finalized by William Summerskill.