COMING UP. Act now to curb hepatitis

Ahead of World Hepatitis Day, on July 28, WHO is urging countries to improve their knowledge about the disease and increase access to testing and treatment. Today, only 1 in 20 people with viral hepatitis knows he/she has it. And just one in 100 with the disease is being treated. Around the world, 400 million people are infected with Hepatitis B and C, more than 10 times the number of people living with HIV. An estimated 1.45 million people died of the disease in 2013 — up from less than a million in 1990. The longer term aim is to reduce new viral hepatitis infections by 90 per cent and to reduce the number of deaths due to viral hepatitis by 65 per cent by 2030 from 2016 figures.