The study sites also found that participant’s guardians were highly motivated in continuing in the study and maintaining compliance to the study protocol. Other factors contributing to continuing in the study could be the stigma and parental guilt associated with a perinatally transmitted infection. The primary reasons for stigmatization in the pediatric population are similar to those in the adult population, including the limits imposed by a chronic disease as well as the fear (on the part of both parent and child) that the child will transmit the hepatitis C virus to others, and the assumption that the infected child has acquired disease because of illicit intravenous drug use (either by the child or secondarily, because the drug-abusing parent transmitted the infection to the child) (Butt, 2008; Paterson et al., 2007). Although stigma is usually considered in the negative context (e.g. having CHC can be associated with the above assumptions), in the case of our parent—child unit, fear that the child will be stigmatized for life unless the infection is eradicated may serve as a powerful motivation for the caregiver to seek treatment for the child. Several of the parents in the study were very proactive about getting their children treated because they themselves had been successfully treated with pegylated interferon and ribavirin.