In its first-ever Global Hepatitis Report released on Friday, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has set the goal to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030 by bringing it down from 1.34 million deaths every year to less than 4,69,000 annually.
The target comes amid concerns that while deaths due to diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV have been declining across the countries, viral hepatitis mortality has increased by 22 per cent since 2000. World over, 130-180 million have chronic hepatitis infection, while in India, 1 per cent of the population has it.
Chronic infection from the viruses can severely damage the liver, leading to cirrhosis and hepatocellular cancer.
As per the report, in 2015, viral hepatitis was responsible for 1.34 million deaths. “This number was comparable with the number of deaths from tuberculosis, but higher than the number of deaths from HIV,” it said.
To achieve the goal to eliminate the disease as a public health threat by 2030, there is need for scaling up of birth dose vaccination against hepatitis B, says the report.
“Despite the success in rolling out childhood hepatitis B vaccination, where coverage has reached 84 per cent, coverage with the initial birth dose vaccination is still unacceptably low at 39 per cent. Another, highlighted in the report, is dramatically improving access to affordable treatment, which remains limited to only 1 per cent of people living with viral hepatitis,” it adds.
Raquel Peck, CEO of World Hepatitis Alliance said “Today, 325 million men, women and children are living with a cancer-causing illness despite the availability of preventative vaccines for hepatitis B and curative treatments for hepatitis C.”
Hepatitis B and C are blood-borne infections, with significant transmission of hepatitis B occurring in early life and of hepatitis C occurring through unsafe injections, including injection drug use, and medical procedures.