Epidemiology of the viral hepatitis A at the Zenica municipality ara in period from 1987 until 2003.

Viral hepatitis A is an endemic disease with periodic epidemics, or sporadic cases within endemic areas. It is present in a majority of world countries, more often in undeveloped ones. In our country it occurs occasionally, so it still cannot be considered as solved problem. This is because Bosnia and Herzegovina until 1990 was in the group of countries with the largest hepatitis A morbidity in Europe, and municipality Zenica within B&H with the largest morbidity in the period from 1987 until 1996. By studying the occurrence of the viral hepatitis A according to age groups, we can notice that the largest number of patients is at the age between 7 and 18 years (school children and youth) with 68.86% of baseline, than follows patients up to 6 years of age with 15.34%. In analysis of occurrence season, it is noticed that disease have a season features with the peak occurrence during November and December. Regarding the area of living, it is noticed that the disease occurs significantly less frequently among urban than rural and suburban population (78%). Among total number of patients within the period of epidemic we have registered 82.0% of patients, and only 18.0% was occasional cases. In majority of cases virus spreads by contact, which is the consequence of poor hygiene and sanitation that was, or still are present in the rural areas, because of inadequate infrastructure and lack of sufficient quantity of clean drinking water, or to say low level of health knowledge among rural population.