Awareness is inadequate among high school children about the hepatitis B virus infection in India

We aimed at assessing the level of knowledge and awareness about hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection among high school children.

This prospective, observational, cross-sectional study was conducted at a tertiary care teaching hospital from November 2023 to December 2024. We included children aged 12 to 19 years who were studying in the 8th, 9th or 10th grade at a nearby school. Participants were excluded if they had a hepatitis B positive family member. The students were asked to complete a set of 19 questions and responses were recorded as 'Yes', 'No' or 'Not sure'. The following domains of their knowledge and awarness were assessed: causative agent, epidemiology, routes of transmission, consequences of infection, methods for infection prevention and treatment.

Data was collected from 365 of the 510 (71.6%) students. Thirty-six participants were excluded and the remaining 329 participants were included in the analysis. Only two-thirds (66.6%) of the students correctly stated that hepatitis B is a virus. Only 4.9% of students believed that HBV could infect young people. A large percentage of children failed to correctly indicate that HBV is not transmitted through food and water (93.9%), casual physical contact (91.5%) or mosquito bites (79.6%). Only 41.4% were aware that HBV is a vaccine-preventable disease and 19.8% knew that three doses of the vaccine are required for adequate protection. Overall performance was particularly low in epidemiology (25.6%), routes of HBV transmission (28.1%) and treatment (16.7%) domains.

School-going children of grades 8-10 demonstrated inadequate knowledge about the burden, transmission routes and prevention of hepatitis B infection.