Hepatitis B

Dr. Chris Greenaway will describe the key points of the Hepatitis B review of the Canadian Collaboration for Immigrant and Refugee Health Evidence-based clinical guidelines.

Key points

• Newly arrived immigrants and refugees have aprevalence of chronic hepatitis B infection of about 4% as compared with 0.5% in the Canadian-born population.
• Immigrants have increased mortality from chronic and viral hepatitis and hepatocellular carcinoma than the Canadian-born population, likely primarily because of increased prevalence of undetected and untreated chronic hepatitis B infection.
• Immigrants would benefit from screening for chronic hepatitis B.
• Immigrants would benefit from hepatitis B vaccination.

CMAJ evidence review

Evidence Based Migrant Health Network