Review of hepatitis C screening programs for immigrants in Spain from endemic countries.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: hepatitis C virus (HCV) screening strategies in European countries do not usually include the migrant population from endemic countries as a target group for screening. The aim of this study is to describe and to evaluate HCV screening strategies for the migrant population residing in Spain and to compare the differences at a regional level. METHODS: on-line research on every Health Public Department's website of each autonomous community was carried out during 2017 and 2019. RESULTS: Aragon, Cantabria, Catalunya, Canary Islands and Madrid have HCV screening programmes and include migrants from high-endemic countries as a high-risk group that should be targeted in the screening programme. The Valencian Community and the Basque Country have an HCV programme although migrants for high endemic countries are not included as a high-risk group. Finally, the other autonomic communities have no specific programme for HCV in place. Few of them have a screening control system and/or evaluation. CONCLUSION: there is heterogeneity on the different HCV autonomic programs concerning the risk groups that should be targeted. A homogenization of such criteria would be recommended. HCV screening in migrant populations from endemic countries should be extended to the rest of autonomic communities. More measures for control and evaluation should be implemented in autonomic strategies with specific indicators for migrant populations.