With 400 million people around the world infected with hepatitis B or C, the United Nations health agency has encouraged countries to boost testing and access to services and medicines for people in need.
"The world has ignored hepatitis at its peril," said Dr. Margaret Chan, Director General of the UN World Health Organisation (WHO). It is time to mobilise a glob-al response to hepatitis on the scale similar to that generated to fight other communicable diseases like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis."
Research showed that the number of people with hepatitis B or C is more than 10 times the number of people infected with HIV, according to UN figures.
Only about one in 20 people with viral hepatitis know they have it; and just one in 100 with the disease is being treated.
Last May, the World Health Assembly WHO's decision-making body called for treating eight million people for hepatitis B or C by 2020, to reduce new viral hepatitis infections by 90 percent, and to decrease the number of deaths by 65 percent in 2030, as compared with 2016. These targets are part of the first ever global health sector strategy on viral hepatitis. "We need to act now to stop people from dying need-lessly from hepatitis," said Dr. Gottfried Hirnschall, WHO's Director of the HIV Department and Global Hep-atitis Programme.
This is coming ahead of World Hepatitis Day, marked annually on July 28. This year's theme, "Know hepatitis — Act now" encourages people to get tested and demand treatment.
According to experts, hepatitis B and C are transmitted through contaminated blood, as well as through contaminated needles and syringes in healthcare setting and among people who inject drugs.
The viruses can also be transmitted through unsafe sex and from an infected mother to her newborn child. A vaccine and treatment exist for hepatitis B, but there is no vaccine for hepatitis C.
Some countries are working to curb the rate of infec-tion of the virus by lowering the prices of hepatitis C medicines, such as in Egypt,where the price si medicines fell from $900 in 2014 to $200 in 2016 as a result of access to generic drugs.
By: Doris Obinna
Daily Sun News
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