Copyright
©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Modelling the prevalence of hepatitis C virus amongst blood donors in Libya: An investigation of providing a preventive strategy
Mohamed A Daw, Acting Physician of Internal Medicine, Scientific Coordinator of Libyan National Surveillance Studies of Viral hepatitis and HIV, Tripoli 82668, Libya
Mohamed A Daw, Amira Shabash, Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Tripoli 82668, Libya
Abdallah El-Bouzedi, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Biotechnology, Tripoli 82668, Libya
Author contributions: Daw MA designed the study, extracted the data, and drafted and finalized the manuscript; Shabash A and El-Bouzedi A collected the data and contributed to the drafting of the manuscript; Dau AA drafted, analyzed, and corrected the manuscript; Habas M collected the data and reviewed the clinical status of all patients; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed by the board of Faculty of Medicine Tripoli Libya and found that the utilization and analysis of microbial epidemiological data did not require oversight by Libyan National Ethics committee. Hence no ethical approval was needed for this study.
Institutional animal care and use committee statement: We declare that no animals or human volunteers were used in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors declare that there is no potential conflict of interests regarding this article.
Data sharing statement: All data will be made freely available via the corresponding author (mohamedadaw@gmail.com). There are no security or licensing matters related to the study.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed byexternal 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: Mohamed A Daw, FTCDA, MD, MPS, PhD, Professor of Clinical Microbiology and Microbial Epidemiology, Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Alfrnaj Road, Tripoli 82668, Libya. mohamedadaw@gmail.com
Telephone: +218-91-2144972 Fax: +218-21-3366218
Received: May 11, 2015
Peer-review started: May 18, 2015
First decision: July 26, 2015
Revised: August 24, 2015
Accepted: September 16, 2015
Article in press: September 18, 2015
Published online: February 12, 2016
Peer-review started: May 18, 2015
First decision: July 26, 2015
Revised: August 24, 2015
Accepted: September 16, 2015
Article in press: September 18, 2015
Published online: February 12, 2016
Core Tip
Core tip: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection has major consequences and an overwhelming impact particularly among developing countries, hence prediction of its prevalence is important for future planning to mitigate its impact. This is an innovative study highlighting the importance of using a modified mathematical model to forecast and predict the future prevalence and consequence of HCV infection using data collected from blood donors. The results will allow strategists in health care services to plan immediate and long-term policies.