Now is the time to act
Today is a stark reminder of the mounting challenges posed by viral hepatitis – particularly hepatitis B and C – in Bangladesh.
Viral hepatitis affects more than fifteen million people in Bangladesh, and causes approximately twenty thousand deaths every year – more than malaria, cholera or TB. Yet most people know little about viral hepatitis and those who do, regard it with stigma and do not necessarily realise that most cases of hepatitis B and C can be prevented, treated, and often even cured.
This year, the WHO included the newest hepatitis treatments in their Model List of Essential Medicines as a signal to governments that they should make them available to those who need them. However, many of these treatments are prohibitively expensive for a country like Bangladesh. Drugs, being developed by public-private partnerships involving the pharma companies, national governments, international donors and research institutes, are gradually being tried and tested in several countries. And one can only hope that this will be the case in Bangladesh as well.
Yet, as we learnt from HIV/AIDS, providing access to drugs is not enough. Our health care and public health systems need to scale up to stop the infection from being spread, and to ensure that people at risk get screened, and those infected receive appropriate treatment and follow up.
Unsafe injection practices are responsible for many of the new infections with hepatitis B or C viruses in Bangladesh. Avoiding re-use of syringes could reduce the number of people infected by hepatitis C by over 1.5 million, and those infected by hepatitis B by close to 280,000 (Hepatology International 2013).
This year, the Coalition to Eradicate Viral Hepatitis in Asia Pacific (CEVHAP), a multi-stakeholder partnership whose aim is to achieve the elimination of viral hepatitis across the region, had as its motto: 'Now is the time'. Now is the time to start putting into place concrete steps towards the elimination of viral hepatitis from our society.
The writers are professor, Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory North Melbourne & Co-Chair, CEVHAP; professor National Taiwan University College of Medicine Taipei & Co-Chair, CEVHAP; and Associate Professor of Hepatology, Bangabadnhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University.
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