Public Inquiries

“Would you be able to provide any stats on percentage of Canadians who are born here, who have H. pylori? Everything I have read is super conflicting.”

There is no available data on the proportion of Canadians born in Canada who have H. pylori infection or on the proportion of all Canadians who have H. pylori infection. This infection is not monitored by surveillance programs because a large proportion of people who have this infection do not have symptoms for which they seek health care and their infection goes undetected. There have not been studies that have generated published estimates of the prevalence of H. pylori infection in a random sample of Canadians, whether native-born or not. A few studies have published estimates of the prevalence of H. pylori in people from defined geographic locations within Canada, but to our knowledge, they do not report separate estimates for people who were born in Canada; furthermore, the estimates from these studies are not current. Evidence suggests that the prevalence of H. pylori is declining in Canada, but that it remains high in the elderly, Aboriginal communities, and immigrants from countries where the prevalence of H. pylori is high. It is likely that the average among all Canadians born in Canada of all ages is less than 30%, but more precise estimates are not available.