Hepatitis is a type of virus that affects the liver, it causes inflammation of the liver. The different types of this virus are Hepatitis A, B, C, D and E; but the most common ones are Hepatitis A, B and C.
Though the types are different, they are all dangerous. Types B and C are the most common cause of liver cirrhosis and cancer.
A very dangerous characteristic of this virus is that most people do not know they have it until it is too late.
About 95% of people with hepatitis do not know they are infected – World Health Organisation
Also, about 400 million people are affected by viral hepatitis in a year.
July 28 of every year has been set aside to commemorate World Hepatitis Day, and this year’s campaign was a major one, because the World Health Organization (WHO) put out strategies to be adopted by WHO member states in fighting and totally eliminating viral hepatitis.
According to Dr Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, “The world has ignored hepatitis at its peril, it is time to mobilize a global response to hepatitis on the scale similar to that generated to fight other like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.”
This year’s World Hepatitis Day global campaign was themed ELIMINATION, and the goal is to eliminate viral hepatitis by 2030.
There is no way to achieve this goal of ELIMINATION, if at the very first people are not informed.
Yesterday, there was lots of activities, tweets, posts and pictures both offline and online (#NoHep) just to create awareness and work towards the elimination of viral hepatitis by 2030.
Below are some snapshots of some of activities on Facebook and tweets on Twitter.
What are you going to do to help eliminate hepatitis by 2030?
Be informed, get tested, get treated and also INFORM OTHERS #NoHep.
[…] defined in an earlier post, Hepatitis is a disease of the liver, it causes inflammation of the liver. Viral hepatitis is known to be the […]