This was revealed at a seminar titled 'Mass Awareness to Prevent Hepatitis- C' organised by Sandhani Central Committee in the city yesterday.

Experts at the seminar said an estimated 90 percent of HCV carriers do not know the presence of the virus in them due to lack of awareness.

They said the prevalence rate of the virus among the healthy persons is about 5.5 percent, among the blood donors 6.2 percent, among the liver cancer patients 56 percent and among the chronic liver disease patients 20- 60 percent.

The speakers said since blood screening is the only mechanism to identify or detect presence of the virus, blood screening practice should also be made mandatory in the private sector where blood transfusion is involved.

Speaking as chief guest Health Minister Dr Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain said voluntary blood donation has substantially increased and people are becoming conscious about safe blood transfusion. He said to raise further awareness media should be more active in preventing transmission of HCV.

Vice-chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Prof M A Hadi, Managing Director of Roche Bangladesh Md Nasser Shahrear Zahedee, and General Secretary of Sandhani Central Committee Md Mamun Shiblee also spoke.

At the seminar, Sandhani awarded two newspaper journalists for their outstanding contributions to raising awareness about diseases like Hepatitis A, B and C and enhancing public knowledge on safe blood transfusion through their write-ups.

They were Naimul Haq, Senior Staff Reporter of The Daily Star and Shamin Al Amin, Staff Reporter of the Prothom Alo.

The health minister gave away the crests to them.

Roche Bangladesh on the occasion handed over 50,000 pieces of strip kits to Sandhani to detect presence of Hepatitis- C virus in blood.