RISK OF HEPATITIS-A IN TRAVELERS

A review of the literature shows that 30-35 million travellers from industrialized nations annually visit a developing country where their incidence rate of symptomatic hepatitis A is 3 to 6 per 1000 per month of stay if they remain unprotected. The risk is 20 per 1000 for persons eating and drinking under poor hygienic conditions. Thus hepatitis A is now the most frequent vaccine-preventable disease in such travellers. Antibodies to hepatitis A virus are rarely found in potential travellers in many industrialized countries, except in those born before 1944, in those with a history of jaundice, or in those with a stay > 1 year in a developing country.