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| (1) Immediate continuous prevention strategies |
| (A) Universal prevention planning |
| (i) Well-planned educational programs regarding the risk of HCV both at the community and health institutions levels |
| (ii) Implementation of international and national guidelines regarding the prevention of HCV particularly at special hospital |
| settings as blood banks and haemodialysis units and high risk groups at the community |
| (iii) Strict adherence to such guidelines and regular assessment to its applications |
| (iv) Introducing specific patient-care practices |
| (B) Special settings prevention programs |
| (i) Blood and blood products, HCV screening program and using thioproprin, haemovigilance |
| (ii) Haemodialysis; strict adherence to nosocomial prevention program; review practices to ensure they are consistent with |
| recommendations and applied routinely, |
| (iii) Laboratory and health care; improving laboratory testing, better sterilization, safer injection, and less exposure to blood |
| products |
| (2) Long-run preventive strategies |
| (A) Universal preventive planning |
| (i) Vigilance and health alert programs which should report any problem and allow to interfere at any time |
| (ii) Elucidation is needed for better prevention, screening, and updating HCV treatment |
| (iii) Prevention of HCV infection progress |
| (iv) Eradicate the massive use of unsafe medical procedures |
| (B) Special settings preventive planning |
| (i) Injecting drug users |
| (ii) HIV-HCV coinfected patients |
| (iii) Prisoners inmates |
| (3) Research planning and priorities |
| Well-designed research programs should be established both at country level and regional levels which may include |
| (i) Population-based surveillance studies |
| (ii) Evaluation of safety and efficacy of antiviral therapy for HCV alone and with other coinfected viruses particularly HIV |
| (iii) Further evaluation of iatrogenic causes of HCV transmission |
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