World Hepatitis Day Initiatives
The World Hepatitis Alliance supports campaigners and patient organisations around the world to help make a difference to the lives of the millions of people living with viral hepatitis and to prevent new infections. To find out more on what is going on in your country, use the map below to find local organisations, World Hepatitis Day initiatives and other initiatives.
You can also look at our ‘Wall of Stories’ and submit your own personal experience of living with hepatitis or find other community resources including an Online Scrapbook and our latest Newsletters. The This is hepatitis... blog features bloggers from around the world talking about their experiences with hepatitis.
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Country: South Africa
City: Cape Town
Type: WHD
South Africa - WHD 2011
The National Institute of Communicable Diseases in South Africa highlighted the opportunity presented by World Hepatitis Day to recognise viral hepatitis as a major global health problem in order to advance prevention and control. The South African Press Release service drew attention to this year’s campaign theme ‘This is hepatitis...Know it. Confront it. Hepatitis affects everyone, everywhere‘. Doctors noted that hepatitis is a silent killer because few people have any outward symptoms before they develop life-threatening complications.
Professor Wendy Spearman, head of the department of hepatology at the University of Cape Town, said the country was struggling with endemic hepatitis B . Although vaccination against hepatitis B was universally available in South Africa since 1995, rural areas have a much higher prevalence. In some areas of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal up to 20% of the population is infected with hepatitis.