Hepatitis C in European prisons: a call for an evidence-informed response

BMC Infectious Diseases

Review

Geert Robaeys¹  Heino Stöver²  Amber Arain³ 

[1] Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg, Genk, Belgium;Limburg Clinical Research Programme, Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium;Department of Hepatology, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven University, Leuven, Belgium;Faculty of Health and Social Work, University of Applied Sciences, Frankfurt, Germany;Limburg Clinical Research Programme, Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences, Hasselt University, Hasselt, Belgium;

关键词: Prison Population;    Sustained Viral Response;    Prison Inmate;    Prison Setting;    Sustained Viral Response Rate;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2334-14-S6-S17

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

Globally, over 10 million people are held in prisons and other places of detention at any given time. People who inject drugs (PWID) comprise 10-48% of male and 30-60% of female prisoners. The spread of hepatitis C in prisons is clearly driven by injection drug use, with many infected prisoners unaware of their infection status. Risk behaviour for acquisition of hepatitis C via common use of injecting equipment is widespread in many prison settings.In custodial settings, effective and efficient prevention models applied in the community are very rarely implemented. Only approximately 60 out of more than 10,000 prisons worldwide provide needle exchange. Thus, HCV prevention is almost exclusively limited to verbal advice, leaflets and other measures directed to cognitive behavioural change. Although the outcome of HCV antiviral treatment is comparable to non-substance users and substance users out of prison, the uptake for antiviral treatment is extremely low.Based on a literature review to assess the spread of hepatitis C among prisoners and to learn more about the impact for the prison system, recommendations regarding hepatitis C prevention, screening and treatment in prisons have been formulated in this article.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Arain et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.