UN health agency spotlights impact of hepatitis B virus

August 22, 2008

21 August 2008 – The United Nations health agency is launching a new information

campaign to highlight the impact of the hepatitis B virus, which is currently

found in about 2 billion people worldwide despite being largely preventable by

vaccine for more than 25 years.

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued factsheets today about the impact and

spread of hepatitis B, which attacks the liver and can cause severe and chronic

illness in sufferers, and even death.

More than 350 million people live with chronic liver disease and about 25 per

cent of adults who became infected during childhood later die from liver cancer

or cirrhosis as a result of the infection. Cirrhosis and liver cancer kill as

many as 700,000 people every year.

The virus – which only affects humans – is transmitted through contact with the

blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person, and not through casual

contact such as by contaminated food or water, the agency reports.

The common methods of transmission are from mother to child at birth, blood

transfusions, sexual contact, unsafe injection practices, and child-to-child.

Hepatitis B is endemic in China and other parts of Asia, with most sufferers

infected during childhood. It is also prevalent in the Amazon basin of South

America, the Middle East, South Asia and parts of Eastern and Central Europe.

WHO said there is no specific treatment for hepatitis B, a vaccine that is 95

per cent effective has been available since 1982. It called for all infants to

be given the vaccine and for all children and adolescents not previously

immunized to also be vaccinated.

Members of high-risk groups, such as injecting drug users and people who engage

in high-risk sexual behaviour, should also be vaccinated, the agency recommends.

Recommended Posts