Hepatitis C virus infection in urban and rural Natal/KwaZulu

This study was undertaken to estimate the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in urban and rural blacks in Natal/KwaZulu. Sera from representative community-based samples comprising 176 urban and 441 rural black adults were tested for the presence of anti-HCV. The prevalence of HCV infection was 1.7% (95% confidence interval 0-3.6%) among urban and 0.9% (95% confidence interval 0.1-1.7%) among rural blacks. Four (0.9%) of the 466 subjects with evidence of current or past hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and 3 (2%) of the 151 with no evidence of HBV infection were anti-HCV-positive. The prevalence of HCV infection was low in contrast to the high prevalence of HBV infection among urban and rural blacks in Natal/KwaZulu. This suggests that HCV does not have the same main routes of transmission as HBV in this region. Larger scale studies are needed to explore this hypothesis.