World Hepatitis Day 2019: Find the Missing Millions

Hepatitis causes liver diseases and can also kill a person.

ISLAMABAD (Dunya News) – World Hepatitis Day is being observed today with the theme of “Find the Missing Millions” with the primary focus on implementing the goals by the year 2030.

According to a report of the World Health Organisation (WHO), a total of $58.7 billion is required to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat in 67 countries by 2030.

World Hepatitis Day, observed on July 28 every year, aims to raise global awareness of hepatitis – a group of infectious diseases known as Hepatitis A, B, C, D, and E – and encourage prevention, diagnosis and treatment.

Hepatitis affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, causing acute and chronic disease and killing close to 1.34 million people every year.

Hepatitis causes liver diseases and can also kill a person.

World Hepatitis Day is one of eight official global public health campaigns marked by the World Health Organization (WHO), along with World Health Day, World Blood Donor Day, World Immunization Week, World Tuberculosis Day, World No Tobacco Day, World Malaria Day and World AIDS Day.

The inaugural International Hepatitis C Awareness day, coordinated by various European and Middle Eastern Patient Groups and Baby Muriel, took place on October 1, 2004.

However, many patient groups continued to mark ‘hepatitis day’ on disparate dates.

For this reason in 2008, the World Hepatitis Alliance in collaboration with patient groups declared May 19 the first global World Hepatitis Day.

The idea of Hepatitis day originated in Cuttack, Odisha. As mentioned by Blumberg himself in his autobiography, Professor SP Singh, Head of the dept of Gastroenterology, SCB Cuttack proposed to celebrate Hepatitis day in the institute on July 28.

Following the adoption of a resolution during the 63rd World Health Assembly in May 2010, World Hepatitis Day was given global endorsement as the primary focus for national and international awareness-raising efforts and the date was changed to July 28 (in honour of Nobel Laureate Baruch Samuel Blumberg, discoverer of the hepatitis B virus, who celebrates his birthday on that date).

The resolution resolves that "28 July shall be designated as World Hepatitis Day in order to provide an opportunity for education and greater understanding of viral hepatitis as a global public health problem, and to stimulate the strengthening of preventive and control measures of this disease in Member States."

World Hepatitis Day is now recognised in over 100 countries each year through events such as free screenings, poster campaigns, demonstrations, concerts, talk shows, flash mobs and vaccination drives, amongst many others.

Each year, a report is published by the WHO and the World Hepatitis Alliance detailing all the events across the world.

World Hepatitis Day provides an opportunity to focus on actions such as:

Raising awareness of the different forms of hepatitis and how they are transmitted; Strengthening prevention, screening and control of viral hepatitis and its related diseases; Increasing hepatitis B vaccine coverage and integration into national immunization programmes; and Coordinating a global response to hepatitis.

Each year focuses on a specific theme. The list of themes is as follows:

2011: Hepatitis affects everyone, everywhere. Know it. Confront it. Confront her 2012: It’s closer than you think 2013: More must be done to stop this silent killer 2014: Hepatitis: Think Again 2015: Prevention of viral Hepatitis. Act now 2016: Know Hepatitis-Act now 2017: Eliminate Hepatitis 2018: Test. Treat. Hepatitis 2019: Find the Missing Millions