What you need to know About Hepatitis B

With over 400 million people living with hepatitis B and C worldwide, 1.4 million die due to these infections every year and many more become newly infected. Transmission of this virus can be prevented through better awareness and services that improve vaccinations, blood and injection safety, and reduce harm. What is hepatitis? Hepatitis simply means inflammation of the liver. The liver is one of the largest organs in the body that helps us to metabolise our food, medicines and toxins. What causes hepatitis? Hepatitis can be caused by infections due to viruses or bacteria or even parasites. Hepatitis can also be caused by toxic substances like abuse or misuse of alcohol. For our purpose, our attention will be focused on viral hepatitis. What is viral hepatitis? Let us return to World Health Organization to guide us: “Viral hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver caused by one of the five hepatitis viruses: A, B, C, D and E. They a...