Abstract:

Introduction: The hepatitis B virus is highly contagious and causes the world’s most common liver infection. Mortality due to viral hepatitis has increased by 63% since and now ranked the seventh leading cause of mortality worldwide. An estimation of 95% individuals with chronic hepatitis B infection are unaware of their infection and so do not benefit from clinical care, treatment, and interventions that are designed to reduce onward transmission.

Aim: Is to assess the awareness of hepatitis B infection, mode of transmission, symptoms, complications and prevention among outpatients attending medical clinic at KCMC.

Method: A cross sectional study with qualitative method using questionnaire was used for data collection. The study was carried out at KCMC medical clinic and the outpatients who attend clinic were included in the study both females and males. A sample size of 138 people was used in this study and the data was analysed by the computer using a special software program SPSS statistic 20.

Results: A total of 138 participants were interviewed of whom they were attending medical clinic at KCMC. Overall, awareness of hepatitis B was at the basic level, 85.5% of the participants knew it as a dangerous disease. On the other side 10.1% of the participants said they have not heard about hepatitis B infection. Among the participants only 9.4% of participants were vaccinated, the remaining percent of participants were not vaccinated but willing to be vaccinated.

Conclusion: This study showed that overall awareness regarding hepatitis B is at a very basic level among participants attending medical clinic and society at large and measure need to be taken to create complete awareness.