Injecting drug use: A vector for the introduction of new hepatitis C virus genotypes

Table 1 The burden of hepatitis C virus infection in the WHO regions and the proportion of people who inject drugs

WHO regions	Population (millions)1	Estimated HCV seroprevalence2 (%)	Estimated prevalence of viremic persons3 (%)	Proportion of PWID lowest-highest estimates4
Africa	1396	1.0-5.3	0.6-4.1	55-97
Latin America	572	0.9-1.3	0.6-1.0	69-96
North America	355	1.3	0.8-1.0
Europe	751	0.9-3.3	0.6-2.3	36-69
Asia	3985	1.1-5.4	0.7-2.3	50-53

Data sources:

¹World health statistics, 2014 (available from: http://www.who.int/world_health_statistics);

²Mohd Hanafiah K, 2013[3];

³Gower E, 2014[10] and Global Health Observatory Data Repository (http://apps.who.int/gho/data);

⁴World Drug report 2014[12]. PWID: Proportion of people who inject drugs; HCV: Hepatitis C virus.