About
Although the risk of HCV acquisition during certain medical procedures, such as dialysis or blood transfusion, has been previously estimated for patients from high-income countries, the overall risk of HCV acquisition associated with hospital stay has never been evaluated. Furthermore, risk factors for HCV infection have been identified for health-care workers, while overall risk of HCV acquisition over time period has never been quantified for the hospital staff. The current project is an epidemiological study to quantify the risk of acquiring HCV in Egyptian hospitals.
The main objectives of this project are to assess the potential risk of HCV infection for health-care workers and patients in Egyptian hospitals. Based in these results, we propose and evaluate strategies for control of HCV risk in Egyptian hospitals. The empirical dataset will include hospital staff and patient trajectories, pin-pointing opportunities for HCV transmission. We will build exposure and risk models to serve as the basis for a user-friendly excel-based risk assessment software, which we will transfer to our Egyptian colleagues. In addition, the individual-based model we will develop will provide a more in-depth investigation of infection transmission dynamics and will allow us to evaluate some innovative control strategies for HCV spread. In this endeavor, we benefit from the past experience of HCV studies within Ain Shams hospital (notably during the “prick injury study”—ANRS 12171), and from the expertise of the MSRSS lab at the Cnam in developing mathematical models of nosocomial pathogen transmission.