2.8 Million Ghanaians living with Hepatitis B — Dr Amoako Duah

About 2.8 million people in the country are living with hepatitis B while 14,000 of them die of the condition every year.

Less than one per cent of the victims had been diagnosed, with less than 1.1 per cent on treatment.

For hepatitis C, about 440,000 people have the condition while 1,800 deaths are recorded per year.

The five northern regions have the highest prevalence of hepatitis B and C, with the Savannah Region having a 22.7 per cent prevalence of hepatitis B. The prevalence of hepatitis C in the northern parts of the country stands at 13.5 per cent.

A Consultant Gastroenterologist at the University of Ghana Medical Centre, Dr Amoako Duah, who disclosed this, further said that the high prevalence of the two conditions in the country - an average of 10 per cent prevalence of hepatitis B and 2.6 per cent prevalence of hepatitis C- makes the disease more serious than HIV which has a 1.2 per cent prevalence rate, and malaria, which is 8.6 per cent.

Occasion

Dr Duah was speaking at a day’s training programme on viral hepatitis, organised by the Ghana Health Service for selected journalists in the country.

He said despite the serious complications associated with the two conditions, people were still not tested to know their status.

“People are not testing to even report the cases. The only time they get to know is when the condition has caused problems in their liver.

“If they see joints, bloated abdomen, swollen legs, feel a mass in their liver, or their abdomen, that's the time they go to the hospital,” he said.

The consultant has, therefore, called for more awareness creation on the two conditions to enable people to know their status early.

Dangers

The consultant said that hepatitis B and C could lead to liver failure, adding that they were the leading causes of liver cancer which is the second most dangerous cancer in the world.

Hepatitis B constitutes between 80 to 90 per cent of liver cancer cases in the country.

Worst still, he said the median age at which people were developing cancer of the liver in the country was 42, which implies that those who were dying from liver cancer in the country were young people in their productive age.

Chronic hepatitis can lead to what in medical terms is known as fibrosis and when it becomes hardened, it leads to loss of liver function also known as cirrhosis.

He said that unlike HIV, malaria and tuberculosis, which attracted global funding, hepatitis had not received the needed attention. He appealed to the government to fund the cost of medications for the treatment of the disease, including expanding access to testing, diagnosis, treatment, and simplification of service delivery.

Focus

The Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Professor Samuel Kaba Akoriyea, said although vaccination could help control the condition, prevention and promotion were the primary focus.

The programme manager of the National Viral Hepatitis Control Programme, Dr Atsu Seake-Kwawu, also said that giving out correct information about viral hepatitis was key, hence the rationale for the training workshop.