ABSTRACT
Background: With a high magnitude of hepatitis C in the country and the burden still rising it was imperative to assess the knowledge of HCV infected individuals, which would determine the further spread of the disease or otherwise based on the adoption of good practices by these patients
Objectives: To evaluate the knowledge and practice regarding HCV in Hepatitis C patients presenting at Ghurki Trust Teaching Hospital, Lahore and to formulate recommendations based on study results to improve knowledge about hepatitis C
Study Design: Descriptive cross-sectional study
Setting: Ghurki Trust Teaching Hospital [GTTH], Lahore
Period: January to May 2015
Methods: The patients of hepatitis C registered at GTTH for treatment were included in the study after obtaining voluntary informed consent from the respondents and approval of the study from the institutional ethical review board. The convenience non-probability sampling technique was used to recruit 169 study participants. A pre-tested structured questionnaire was used to collect information, which was recorded and analyzed using the statistical package for social sciences version 21.0. Data is described in the form of frequencies and percentages for categorical variables and mean and standard deviation for continuous variable
Results: Of the 169 HCV patients, 110[65%] had heard of hepatitis C before acquiring it, the popular source of information regarding HCV was identified as relatives by 67[39.8%] of the patients. 70[41.4%] of the respondents were aware of a virus being the cause of hepatitis C, 140[82.8%] knew that HCV can be spread through sharing injecting equipment, nearly half the respondents 87[51.5%] had asked their family members to get tested for HCV and 68[40.2%] patients practiced safe sex
Conclusion: Majority of the respondents had heard of HCV before acquiring the disease. A large proportion of patients were aware of the disease being spread through sharing injecting equipment. Half of the patients had their family members tested for HCV. But less than half practiced safe sex