travel down up to the coastal and far northern states to
acquire market wares thereby prolonging their period of
stay away from home.
Results of this study also revealed a high prevalence of
HCV recorded among pregnant women that had recently
received blood transfusion. This emphasizes the need to
include the routine screening of HCV along wit HIV and
HBV in the current safe blood practices in all hospitals. It
is common knowledge that in Nigeria, screening of blood
donors in most hospitals is done for HIV alone and in
some cases with HBV.
In conclusion, findings from this study have raised
pertinent issues of public health importance particularly
the high prevalence of parallel and overlapping HIV, HBV
HCV infections found among pregnant women in the
FCT-Abuja, Nigeria. Hence, when monitoring the risk of
hepatotoxicity to antiretroviral drugs among these group
of patients caution should be maintained. Also, there is
need to include HBV and HCV among the disease of
surveillance in the biannual national sentinel survey.
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