Viral hepatitis kills 0.5m people a year in SE Asia: WHO
Saturday, 26 July 2014
Viral hepatitis kills approximately half a million people every year in the 11 countries of WHO's South-East Asia Region, including Bangladesh, reports UNB.
An estimated 100 million people are currently infected with hepatitis B virus and another 30 million with hepatitis C virus. These chronic infections have the potential to progress to cirrhosis and cancer of liver, says a WHO press release.
"Most of these deaths are preventable. Since these infections can go undetected for years, many people do not know they are infected until much later, when treatment may be too late." said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia.
On May 22, 2014, the 67th World Health Assembly adopted a resolution aiming to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of viral hepatitis.
The resolution highlights the importance of expanding hepatitis A and B vaccination programmes and considers a range of measures to strengthen infection control and improve access to quality and affordable medicines and diagnostics.
"There are several challenges to translating this resolution into action. In most countries of the Region, surveillance systems for viral hepatitis are inadequate and do not enable evidence-based policy decisions," said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh.
"Treatment for hepatitis is not widely available. A combination of approaches is essential to make new hepatitis medications accessible in low-and middle-income countries," she noted.
All countries of the South-East Asia Region include hepatitis B vaccines in immunisation programmes for children. Indonesia and Thailand use the tetravalent form, and other countries use the pentavalent form of the vaccine.
An additional birth dose is administered in Bhutan, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Maldives and Thailand. More than 24 million doses of the hepatitis vaccine are being administered in the Region annually. Though a vaccine against hepatitis A is available, it is not yet widely used in the Region.
Because hepatitis viruses differ in their distribution and routes of transmission there is a need to adopt coordinated national strategies based on the local epidemiological context.