Hepatitis B Virus Awareness and Vaccine Coverage among Voluntary Blood Donors in Jos: Implication for Eradicating the Hepatitis B Virus

Abstract

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is one of the leading causes of chronic viral infections worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) aims to eliminate HBV as a global health threat by 2030. Our study, therefore, aimed to identify factors that may hinder the WHO’s objective of eradicating HBV in our environment and suggests ways of addressing them. We conducted a survey at the National Blood Transfusion Service, Jos, among voluntary non remunerated blood donors (VNRBD) aged 18-65 years from October to December 2020 using structured questionnaires addressing awareness of HBV, vaccine uptake, socio-demography, and other information. Of the 120 participants, 88.3% were aware of HBV. The majority (35.8%) had heard about the virus through Health talks given at schools and hospitals by health personnel, followed by Social media (25.5%), Family members (18.0%), Friends (13.2%), Taught in School (2.8%), Mass media (1.9%), Print media (1.9%) and told by a patient (0.9%). A Significant proportion of the population (63.6%) was found to be unvaccinated against HBV, citing unawareness of the vaccine (57.9%) and not knowing where to get the vaccine (21.6%) as reasons for non-uptake. The participants’ sources of awareness of HBV vaccine were Health talk (40.9%), Social media (18.2%), Friends (15.2%), Family members (10.6%), taught in school (4.5%), Mass media (4.5%), Print media (4.5%), and told by a patient (1.5%). This study found that awareness of HBV among participants did not translate into increased vaccine uptake. We identified unawareness, poor accessibility and unavailability of the vaccine as obstacles for eradicating HBV in our setting. We recommend strengthening childhood immunization, teaching about vaccines at elementary schools, increasing social media utilization for vaccine information dissemination, and increased availability of the vaccine.