UNITED NATIONS - One-third of the world countries have national strategies for hepatitis, the United Nations health agency said Wednesday, urging governments to tackle this ‘silent epidemic’.
“Hepatitis B and C infections are silent, causing no symptoms, points to the urgent need for universal access to immunization, screening, diagnosis and antiviral therapy,” UN World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director General Dr Keiji Fukuda, said ahead of World Hepatitis Day.
Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver, most commonly caused by a viral infection. There are five main hepatitis viruses as types A, B, C, D and E, WHO said. These severe infections lead to 1.4 million deaths every year. Hepatitis A and E are food and water borne infections, while hepatitis
B, C, and D are spread by infected body fluids including blood, by sexual contact, mother-to-child transmission during birth, or by contaminated medical equipment.
The World Health Assembly has designated 28 July as the World Hepatitis Day. The Day serves to promote greater understanding of hepatitis as a global public health problem and to stimulate strengthening of preventive and control measures against infection in countries throughout the world.
The global policy report on the prevention of hepatitis exposes that around 126 countries have a gap in the implementation of four priority areas: raising awareness, evidence-based data for action, prevention of transmission, and screening, care and treatment.
The report findings show that 82 percent of the countries have established hepatitis surveillance programmes, only half of them include the monitoring of chronic hepatitis B and C, which are responsible for most severe illnesses and deaths.
“Many of the measures needed to prevent the spread of viral hepatitis can be put in place right now, and doing so will offset the heavy economic costs of treating and hospitalising patients in future,” said Dr Sylvie Briand, Director of Pandemic and Epidemic Diseases at WHO.
“The findings underline the important work that is being done by governments to halt hepatitis through the implementation of WHO recommended policies and actions,” Dr. Briand added.
In addition, WHO has been working on developing networks and is exploring with international funding agencies avenues that could allow hepatitis to be included in their current programme of activities, the UN agency said in its statement.
In June 2013, WHO launched the Global Hepatitis Network, and one of its aims is to support countries with planning and implementation of viral hepatitis plans and programmes.
WHO is currently developing new hepatitis C screening, care and treatment guidelines, which will provide recommendations on seven key areas such as testing approaches; behavioural interventions (alcohol reduction); non-invasive assessment of liver fibrosis; and the selection of hepatitis C drug combinations.
”New, more effective medicines to prevent the progression of chronic hepatitis B and C are in the pipeline,” said Dr. Stefan Wiktor, team lead in WHO’s Global Hepatitis Programme. “However, these will be expensive and therapy will require monitoring with sophisticated laboratory tests. To cure and reduce the spread of these viruses, medicines must become more accessible.”