Wednesday, 29 July 2015

HEPATITIS: What You Need To Know


Its another edition of Wellness Wednesday and coincidentally it is also the World Hepatitis Day 2015, in our little effort to create awareness and get people informed, here are little tips you need to know about this life threatening disease.


The World Health Organization and World Hepatitis Alliance have announced that the campaign theme for the World Hepatitis Day 2015 will be prevention of Viral Hepatitis. (Source : WHO).
The annual campaign, marked on 28 July, aims not only to raise awareness among the general public and infected patients, but also to urgently promote improved access to hepatitis services, particularly prevention interventions, by policymakers. (Source : WHO).
Hepatitis is simply the inflammation of the liver. The peculiarity of the clinical condition is that it may occur with or without signs and symptoms. Most common obvious symptom is jaundice (yellowish discoloration of the eyes and skin). People generally call it "yellow fever ". Others are loss of appetite, malaise, urine darkening etc. These, though peculiar to liver pathologies, are non-specific to hepatitis. Other liver pathologies with these include Cholangitis, Liver Cancer etc.
It could be Acute or Chronic with a time interval of 6 months. This eventually results in Acute Liver Failure or Liver Cirrhosis respectively. 
Mode of infection include chronic alcohol intake, toxic drug consumption, physical contact with an infected individual, mother-to-child, un-screened blood transfusion etc.
It is, thus, important to present immediately at the hospital for adequate treatment. 
In lieu of this, Vaccines are the major means of prevention if test negative. The World Health Organization recommends vaccination of all children, particularly newborns in countries where hepatitis B is common to prevent transmission from the mother to child.
(Source http://www.who.int/hiv/mediacentre/news/whd2015_preventhepatitis/en/)

Tell someone to tell another...stay HEALTHY

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