HEPATITIS C BECOMES A MAJOR PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEM

DAKAR, Senegal (PANA) - Experts attending a recent World Health
Organization (WHO) meeting on hepatitis were told that hepatitis C had
turned into a major public health problem.

At the April 27-29 meeting, says a WHO news release, it was revealed that
prevalence of 0.5 percent to greater than 10 percent had been found in
population samples around the world.

The release quoted Dr Daniel Lavanchy, who heads the WHO's Division of
Emerging and other Communicable Diseases Surveillance Control (EMC) as
saying more than 170 million people worldwide are now estimated to suffer
from the disease.

What is worrying medical professionals most is the increasing link between
infectious diseases such as hepatitis C and cancer.

It is now estimated that about 80 percent of acutely infected patients
progress to chronic hepatitis, that about 20 percent of these chronic
infections develop cirrhosis, and that 1 percent to 5 percent of cirrhotic
individuals will develop hepatocellular carcinoma (cancer of the liver)
during the next 10 years.

In their conclusions, the experts insisted that groups considered
especially at risk should be priority targets for prevention efforts.

High-risk groups were identified to include intravenous drug users,
recipients of unscreened blood, haemophiliacs, dialysis patients and the
sexually promiscuous who engage in unprotected sex.

"In developing countries, people who take part in traditional scarification
and circumcision practices are also at risk if they use unhygienic or
re-used tools for these operations," the WHO release said.

The experts agreed that screening of all blood donors and organ donors
worldwide could prevent the disease from spreading further.

They also stressed the need to inform health workers on the risk and means
of transmitting hepatitis C, educate school children and others in the
community about the disease, its effects and means of stopping its spread.

Since no vaccine is available, the experts said, "preventing the spread of
the disease must be paramount.

"No vaccine is available yet, although research continues and preliminary
clinical trials of an experimental vaccine are in progress. Active
immunization against hepatitis C may be possible early in the next century."

Copyright © 1998 Panafrican News Agency.