According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2024 Global Hepatitis Report, the number of lives lost due to viral hepatitis is increasing.
Key findings
- More than 3,500 people die from hepatitis viruses every day and the global toll is rising.
- The disease is the second leading infectious cause of death globally with 1.3 million deaths per year, which is same as tuberculosis.
- New data from 187 countries showed that the number of deaths from viral hepatitis rose to 1.3 million in 2022 from 1.1 million in 2019.
- 254 million people lived with hepatitis B and 50 million with hepatitis C in 2022 globally. Yet only three percent of those with chronic hep B received antiviral treatment by the end of 2022.
- Two thirds of all hepatitis cases are in Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia and Vietnam.
- India accounted for the second-highest number of cases of hepatitis B and C in 2022 after China, with 3.5 crore infections.
- India, which was second only to China in the viral hepatitis burden, registered 2.98 crore hepatitis B cases in 2022 while the number of hepatitis C infections stood at 55 lakh. With a total of 3.5 crore cases, India accounted for 11.6% of the total disease burden globally that year.
Hepatitis
- Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver that can cause a range of health problems and can be fatal.
- There are effective and cheap generic drugs which can treat these viruses.
- There are five main strains of the hepatitis virus, referred to as types A, B, C, D and E. While they all cause liver disease, they differ in important ways including modes of transmission, severity of the illness, geographical distribution and prevention methods.
