Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Hepatol. Dec 8, 2016; 8(34): 1521-1528
Published online Dec 8, 2016. doi: 10.4254/wjh.v8.i34.1521
Seroprevalence of hepatitis B surface antigen in pregnant women attending antenatal clinic in Honiara Solomon Islands, 2015
Aneley Getahun, Margaret Baekalia, Nixon Panda, Alice Lee, Elliot Puiahi, Sabiha Khan, Donald Tahani, Doris Manongi
Aneley Getahun, Sabiha Khan, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, College of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences, Fiji National University, Suva, Fiji Islands
Margaret Baekalia, Department of Health and Social Affairs, Yap State Hospital, Colonia 96943, Federated States of Micronesia
Nixon Panda, School of Nursing and Allied Health Sciences, Solomon Islands National University, Honiara, Solomon Islands
Alice Lee, Concord Repatriation General Hospital, University of Sydney, Concord NSW 2139, Australia
Elliot Puiahi, Donald Tahani, Doris Manongi, National Referral Hospital, Honiara, Solomon Islands
Author contributions: Getahun A prepared the proposal, designed the study, drafted and revised the manuscript; Panda N identified the topic and supervised the study implementation; Baekalia M, Puiahi E, Tahani D and Manongi D performed the laboratory tests; Lee A reviewed and edited the manuscript and provided technical support; Khan S design the study, analyzed and interpreted the data; all authors contributed to the write up and the revision of the manuscript.
Supported by University Research Publication Committee (URPC), Fiji National University, No. ACT339; and Hepatitis B Free (HBF) Ltd, Australia, No. 25 167 817 389.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by the College Research and Ethics Committee of Fiji National University (FNU) and the National Health Research and Ethics Committee of MHMS, Solomon Islands (HRC14/28).
Informed consent statement: All study participants provided written informed consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The study team declared no conflict of interest.
Data sharing statement: The de-identified dataset is available from the corresponding author at aneley.getahun@fnu.ac.fj.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Aneley Getahun, MD, MTCM, DTMH, Assistant Professor in Primary Care, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, College of Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences, Fiji National University, Princess Road, Tamavua, Suva, Fiji Islands. aneley.getahun@fnu.ac.fj
Telephone: +679-9789779 Fax: +679-3321107
Received: June 27, 2016
Peer-review started: June 29, 2016
First decision: August 5, 2016
Revised: September 9, 2016
Accepted: October 17, 2016
Article in press: October 18, 2016
Published online: December 8, 2016
Processing time: 161 Days and 20 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of chronic hepatitis B infection in a cohort of antenatal women in Honiara. The overall hepatitis HBsAg and hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) prevalence was 13.8% and 36.7%, respectively. Our study for the first time reported HBeAg prevalence in pregnant women. Furthermore, the study revealed low level of knowledge about hepatitis B vaccination whereby 54.6% of participants were not aware of their vaccination status. Hepatitis B is a disease of public health importance in Solomon Islands and emphasize the need for efficient delivery of integrated services for its prevention and control.