World Hepatitis Day is celebrated this Friday to raise awareness and awareness about the disease.
Murcia, July 27 (European Press) –
The Murcia region will work with the other three autonomous regions to evaluate the hepatitis B screening program during pregnancy and the early management of newborns, a source in the Murcia regional government said in a statement.
With this study, not only hepatitis B screening in pregnancy was assessed but also whether newborn sons of mothers with hepatitis B were correctly following the course of action as they had to be vaccinated within the first few hours of life And vaccination with vaccine-specific immune globulin to prevent mother-to-child transmission of infection.
Pregnancy screening for hepatitis B has been available in the district since 1994 and has been included in the Integrated Program of Care for Women (PIAM) since 2012.
Most pregnant women are in the SMS pregnancy surveillance program and are screened at any point in pregnancy with appropriate measures to avoid vertical transmission.
According to data recorded by the Vaccine Service, the region’s public maternity hospitals have a 100% compliance rate for the action, as all babies born to carrier mothers in 2021 and 2022 were previously vaccinated against gamma globulin and hepatitis B. leave the hospital.
As part of a strategy to eliminate hepatitis B, WHO urges countries to deepen their evaluation of hepatitis B screening programs in pregnancy and early childhood management.
The Ministry of Health will start evaluating this screening at the national level and select the Community to conduct a study with Madrid, Valencia and Catalonia. In this study, vaccination data from the Regional Vaccination Registry have been included, as well as data from the perinatal clinical history of the Murcia region, which was awarded the National Health System Good Practice Award in 2020.
more than two billion
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that more than 2 billion people worldwide are infected with the hepatitis B virus, of whom 240 million are chronically infected.
World Hepatitis Day is celebrated this Friday to strengthen the international fight against the disease and raise public awareness.
Hepatitis B is a vaccine-preventable disease. The vaccine was introduced in adolescents in the 1990s, and the age at which vaccinations began was lowered to one year of age in 1999.
At present, the coverage rate of hepatitis B vaccination in my country exceeds 95%, and the vaccination rate of children exceeds 95%. Therefore, most adults under the age of 40 have been vaccinated against hepatitis B vaccine, and the incidence rate has dropped significantly. Spain is currently a country with low hepatitis B prevalence. Coverage is slightly higher in this area.
However, the severity and chronicity of the disease are inversely proportional to the age at onset. In fact, the probability of chronic HBV infection in neonates infected with mother-to-child transmission during delivery is 90%. Therefore, elimination of mother-to-child transmission of this HBV infection is considered a milestone on the road to elimination of the virus.