Assessment of Mother-to-Child transmission of Hepatitis C Virus in Egyptian Pregnant Women

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) has an ambitious plan to eliminate HCV by 2030. This new approach was fueled by increased appreciation of the global morbidity and mortality caused by hepatitis C, and the remarkable recent treatment developments (World Health Organization, 2016). Viral hepatitis (B and C) caused 1.34 million deaths in 2015, a number comparable to deaths caused by tuberculosis and higher than those caused by HIV (World Health Organization, 2017). Globally, in 2015, an estimated 71 million people, or 1% of the world’s population, and including 5 million children, were living with chronic HCV infection, with the highest prevalence in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region and the European Region (El-Shabrawi and Kamal, 2013; Sokal and Nannini, 2017).