Hepatitis C Screening in Intravenous Drug Users Under Treatment with Methadone: An Action Reserch Study

Abstract

Background: Intravenous drug users (IVDUs) are the most at risk group for viral hepatitis C and injection drug is responsible to more than 60% of HCV infected new cases worldwide. Hepatitis C screening in centers for methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) has several benefits in harm reduction stategies. Methods: In an action research study, after coordinating centers for MMT, questiononaires including demographic and risk factors of HCV were sent to 80 active centes in Isfahan province to complete and add their result for HCV-Ab test. Finding: Only seven centers with 1055 members, sent their completed questionaires to administrators, but most of documents were without any HCV-Ab test results. Overall, 74 (7.0%) participants were positive for hepatitis C. Conclusion: The results of this study indicated serious problem in execution which was due to lack of cooperration of the centers' mannagers, stuffs and members. Hence, it is recommended to do active intervention and consider a reward for future investigators.

Keywords

• Methadone Maintenance
• Hepatitis C
• IVDU