Tackling The Hepatitis Scourge

Two days ago, the world marked the 2010 World Hepatitis Day. And as has been the practice, it afforded medical experts an opportunity to raise global awareness on the nature of hepatitis, particularly its prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

World Hepatitis Alliance (WHA), a global interventionist group of professionals united in the struggle to check the mortality caused by this killer health condition, says while about 170 million people worldwide have hepatitis B or hepatitis C, approximately 1.5 million people die every year from either of the two viruses.

According to this group of experts, one out of every 12 persons lives with either hepatitis B or hepatitis C globally, making the disease a more common health problem than HIV/AIDS or any form of cancer. It is, indeed, for this singular statistic that the 2008 World Hepatitis Day campaign slogan, Am I Number 12?, still remains relevant.

Bringing the figures closer home, another group of experts which addressed newsmen on the eve of this year’s celebration, the Society for Gastroenterology and Hepatology of Nigeria (SOGHIN), estimates that about 20 million people in Nigeria are infected with hepatitis, out of which five million are on the verge of dying due to late diagnosis.

Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver resulting in soreness and swelling. Physicians refer to inflammations that last for less than six months as acute hepatitis while those that last longer than six months are known as chronic hepatitis.

Some of the common causes of hepatitis include excessive drinking of alcohol, obesity, poison, inadequate blood supply to the liver, injury to the liver, taking of herbal mixtures and unprescribed medication.

In the event that any one of hepatitis B or C is left untreated or unmanaged, it can lead to advanced liver scarring (cirrhosis) and other complications which may include liver cancer, liver failure and eventual death.

While it is true that liver reacts in different ways depending on the cause and duration of its infection, some common symptoms of hepatitis have been said to include jaundice (yellow colouring of the skin and eyes), fatigue, fever, nausea and vomiting.

Experts have also described hepatitis B and C as silent killer viruses. This is because people can live with these viruses for many years without a manifestation of the symptoms, a condition described as asymptomatic. Again, the situation becomes even trickier as a good number of the symptoms are also common to other ailments and, as such, people are wont to ignore them or wrongly attribute such to any less harmful infection.

While hepatitis B which traces can be found in all major body fluids of infected persons, including blood, saliva, urine, sweat, tears, semen and vaginal fluid, is amenable to prevention through vaccination, there is no known vaccine, as yet, for hepatitis C even though doctors say an effective treatment option exists for infected persons.

The Tide is, however, worried that apart from what medical experts read out to their audiences on World Hepatitis Days, not much is being achieved in the campaign to raise and sustain awareness concerning the hepatitis scourge in Nigeria. It is apparently for this reason that the general HIV/AIDS awareness level has consistently overreached that of hepatitis, even when the two viral infections are known to be equally deadly.

We believe that it is now time for the federal, state and local governments, while working in tandem with the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other international health agencies, to step up the hepatitis awareness campaign, especially in the rural communities.