Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) screening, case finding and treatment is an urgent public 
health issue and a national priority on health, social and economic levels. However, the high cost of 
the gold standard diagnostic test, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and the inaccessibility of trustful 
laboratories in many areas pushed the epidemiologists to search for easier, cheaper and fieldapplicable screening tools to detect infected individuals and then to confirm only the positive cases by 
the expensive PCR testing. Methodology: A total of 558 blood samples were confirmed for diagnosis 
of HCV by qualitative and quantitative PCR as a reference test. Those samples, 178 positive cases of 
HCV and 380 negative samples were further, examined by the enzyme-linked immunosorbant assay 
(ELISA) and the InTec rapid diagnostic testing kit to detect and compare their sensitivity, specificity, 
accuracy and efficiency as mass screening tests. Results: Compared with the reference PCR test, the 
InTec rapid diagnostic test showed a sensitivity of 99.4%, a specificity of 98.7%, a positive predictive 
value of 97.3%, a negative predictive value of 99.7%, an accuracy percent of 98.9% and an error 
percent of 1.1%. These results were comparable to that of ELISA. Conclusions: The InTec rapid 
diagnostic testing kit is a simple, cheap, sensitive, specific and efficient test that can be used in the 
field for simple and rapid diagnosis of HCV infection. The accuracy of the InTec kits has implications 
for its use in clinical and outreach settings Such field diagnosis of HCV infection is essential for case 
finding, screening and surveillance of HCV and for all the efforts that are exerted to treat, control and
combat the disease.