Hepatitis C virus infections reported over 11 years of surveillance in Saudi Arabia

This was a case series descriptive study of all subjects reported to the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia from January 1995 to December 2005 as having hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, diagnosed by detection of antibodies to HCV. A total of 24,948 cases were reported, of whom 19,185 (76.9%) cases were Saudis. The number of HCV infections by region ranged from 16 to 322 cases, with a mean of 124 cases per 100,000 population, or 0.124%. The number of cases reported among children <15 years was 998 cases (12 cases per 100,000 pediatric population, or 0.012%), and that among adults was 23950 cases (202 cases per 100,000 adult population, or 0.202%). There was a slight steady increase in the annually reported infections from 1995 to 2002, followed by a plateau. The lower number of HCV infections reported in children compared with those reported in adults suggested that perinatal and childhood transmission was not a major mode of infection and that other modes of transmission, such as unscreened blood transfusion before 1990 and intravenous drug use, were likely to be the main modes of infection. The study was limited by being a passive reporting of cases and not a cross-sectional survey.