WORLD HEPATITIS DAY 2021
- innovatenimsancr
- Jul 28, 2021
- 4 min read
World Hepatitis Day, annually celebrated on 28th July, is one of the 11 official public health campaigns marked by the World Health Organization (WHO). In the 63rd World Health Assembly of May 2010 the World Hepatitis Day gained global awareness and 28th July was given global endorsement (birthday of Nobel-prize winning scientist Dr Baruch Blumberg, who discovered hepatitis B virus (HBV) and developed a diagnostic test and vaccine for the virus.)
This was all in a bid to provide an opportunity to step up national and international efforts on hepatitis, encourage actions and engagement by individuals, partners and the public and highlight the need for a greater global response as outlined in the WHO's Global hepatitis report of 2017.
This year's theme "Hepatitis Can't Wait", conveys the urgency of efforts needed to eliminate hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030 because someone dies every 30 seconds from a hepatitis related illness.
There are five main strains of the hepatitis virus A, B, C, D and E. Together, hepatitis B and C are the most common which result in 1.1 million deaths and 3 million new infections per year.
It is worthy of note that due to the burden of this group of illnesses, people living with hepatitis can't wait for life saving treatments. Hepatitis B testing and treatment for pregnant women, hepatitis B vaccination at birth, protection of people affected by hepatitis against stigma and discrimination as well as greater investment in Hepatitis prevention and treatment is everybody's responsibility.
Decision makers can make hepatitis elimination a reality through political will and funding, policy makers can integrate viral hepatitis elimination with other health services as well as including all aspects of managing hepatitis in the National Health Insurance Scheme.
Universal health coverage for all people with hepatitis cant wait. Starting now means saving lives.
A call is put out for national leaders to set up national hepatitis elimination targets, care for the most vulnerable people with hepatitis, scale up essential hepatitis services and engage communities in hepatitis services.
Global efforts to eliminate HIV, viral hepatitis and STIs required acceleration to achieve targets even before the COVID-19 pandemic. As countries worldwide mobilized efforts to mount a comprehensive public health response to a new infectious disease, the fact that global health security would not be achieved without resilient, adaptable and equitable health systems to deliver universal health coverage became more evident than ever.
According to the 2021 WHO Global Progress Report on HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexually Transmitted Infections, on average, 36% of countries reported disruption to communicable disease services due to the COVID-19 pandemic. HIV testing services and thus antiretroviral therapy initiation have also continued to be affected in many countries. The number of countries showing disruption in antiretroviral therapy delivery declined from 34 in June 2020 to 17 by March 2021, but one quarter of the reporting countries continued to face disruption in newly initiating treatment.
43% of countries reported disruption in hepatitis B and C diagnosis and which was as a result of a mix of supply- and demand-side factors, and their extent can differ within a country in terms of service delivery, population or geography. In some places, HIV testing services, especially community and voluntary testing activities, have been limited or restricted. Demand for services has also declined as a result of physical distancing measures, financial constraints or fear of contracting COVID-19.
Countries now face the double challenge of mitigating the risk of further disruption while having to catch up on disruption that has already taken place. Ongoing efforts are needed to focus and set priorities among interventions while planning for strategic efforts to prevent going further off-track from achieving the global goals.
Worldwide, countries and communities facing the COVID-19 pandemic have responded in innovative ways to adapt, combine, differentiate, decentralize and simplify health services to meet peoples needs during the crisis by:
Accelerating policy implementation
Leveraging health systems capacity
Simplifying community-based delivery
Developing strategies for safe delivery
Expanding the use of self-care interventions
Increasing the use of digital health
The pandemic has demonstrated the importance and effectiveness of making full use of such people-centered and community-led solutions to deliver essential services in an equitable and sustainable way.
Maintaining these innovative approaches as part of a catch-up of services can enable countries to fully leverage the resilience of health and community systems and respond to the needs of the most vulnerable people in the path towards the Sustainable Development Goals.
Diagnostics and treatment algorithms and service delivery models for hepatitis can further be simplified progressively. Implementation of innovations to simplify diagnostics and their delivery and access are needed as part of primary health care approaches. Innovation needs further development and quality products including core antigen for hepatitis C virus as a rapid diagnostic test but even simply having high-quality hepatitis B surface antigen tests.
Nancy S. Reau proposed that prepandemic, most countries were significantly off track to achieve the 2030 goals, which has only been exponentially increased by COVID-19. Not only has this sidetracked the target, but the pandemic has also taken cancer screening and preventive strategies such as vaccination two steps backward.
For every individual seeking screening for COVID-19 an opportunity lies to screen for other underlying health issues. It would not be that difficult to also screen for viral hepatitis, HIV, diabetes and hypertension, especially if results could be communicated at that visit. Technology already exists to obtain samples remotely without venipuncture. Point of care screening and use of dried blood spot have been proposed to increase access even prior to COVID-19.
We can capitalize on prevention at the time of COVID-19 vaccination. This is a great time to offer other vaccinations such as hepatitis B and hepatitis A.
It is believed that for Nigeria, decentralization of care and task shifting to non-specialists is one way in which the management of hepatitis could be rapidly improved in. (Dr Ruth Bello).
We can do more as medical students to make sure awareness is on an all-time high. We can't wait anymore.
You can take a minute to join the conversation to halt the devastation due to Hepatitis by speaking out with the hashtags #WorldHepatitisDay and #InnovateNIMSACR.
Remember, the time to stop Hepatitis is now because Hepatitis can't wait and we shouldn't too.
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