According to the World Health Organization, the disease will be the deadliest by 2040

On this occasion World Health Organization (WHO) World Hepatitis Day Today warned of the need to curb current trends in the disease, By 2040, it will kill more people than malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS combined.

The UN health agency has launched a campaign with the slogan “One Life, One Liver” with the main goal of eradicating Hepatitis C as a public health problem within the next seven years.

According to the World Health Organization, more than one million people die from hepatitis every year. Types B and C are the deadliest, Currently, only 10% and 21%, respectively, of the 350 million people living with these diseases are diagnosed.

Furthermore, only 13 percent of patients diagnosed with hepatitis C who were curable with oral therapy received curative treatment, while this rate dropped to 2 percent among patients diagnosed with chronic hepatitis B.

“While we have the best tools ever to prevent, diagnose and treat hepatitis, millions of people around the world still live with undiagnosed and untreated hepatitis,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters. recognized.

The World Health Organization recommends that, to prevent new infections and deaths from hepatitis B and C, promote access to treatment for all pregnant women with hepatitis B or provide newborns with a vaccine against the disease.

It has also set the aspirational goal of diagnosing 90 percent of hepatitis B and C patients and ensuring that 80 percent of those diagnosed receive treatment.

In the case of hepatitis B, mother-to-child transmission during pregnancy is the most common, mainly in the Western Pacific region, Africa and South-East Asia, and testing pregnant women for hepatitis B is key to slowing transmission.

However, only 78% of countries surveyed (64 of 82 countries) claimed to have a national policy on hepatitis B screening in pregnancy, according to a new WHO report.

Of these, only half (32 of 64) reported that they ultimately applied the measures in antenatal care clinics.

In this sense, the World Health Organization insists that increasing hepatitis testing and treatment in HIV programs will play a fundamental role in eliminating hepatitis B in countries most affected by this virus.

In addition, the organization highlighted the inclusion of a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine in the Gavi Alliance’s 2018 Vaccine Investment Strategy, as it believes this “will boost newborn vaccination programs in West and Central Africa, regions with high rates of mother-to-child transmission” . The incidence of hepatitis B remains high.

For its part, UNITAID, the international agency that promotes access to AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatment in developing countries, joined the WHO call and insisted that hepatitis C is a global health problem,” Only “because testing and treatment reach those and communities that need it most”.

“A lack of awareness of risk factors and the need for testing for infection, combined with insufficient supply and testing that remains too complex, is a major impediment to the uptake of new medicines,” said UNITAID spokesperson Herve Verhoosel.

Globally, some 58 million people are living with hepatitis C, but only one in five are diagnosed and far fewer receive treatment, according to UNITAID.

Eighty percent of hepatitis C cases are concentrated in low- and middle-income countries, where the populations with the highest infection rates (injecting drug users or people in prison) often have the worst access to health services.

“With 1.5 million new hepatitis C infections each year, we cannot wait and must accelerate development of optimal solutions, remove barriers and facilitate scaling up of key interventions to help achieve a global goal of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030 objectives”, concluded the UNITAID spokesperson.

continue reading:

* Hepatitis A, B and C continue to hit hardest in NYC’s poorest neighborhoods
* What are the main diseases affecting the liver?
* What are the different types of hepatitis and what are their symptoms?