Kaohsiung’s E-Da Hospital recently came upon three strains of the hepatitis C virus hitherto unseen in Taiwan, which could represent a threat to the public health system, medical researchers at the hospital said yesterday.
Lin Hsi-hsun (林錫勳), chief of E-Da’s infectious diseases department, said that to date only three strains of the hepatitis C virus were endemic to Taiwan: strains 1b, 2a and 2b.
“These three strains are well-known to local physicians and effective treatments were developed long ago,” Lin said. “However, the three new strains — 1a, 6a and 3a — are relatively foreign to us and we may need some time before we can develop or adopt viable treatments.”
Blood samples of 243 drug addicts who had been in prison between 2004 and 2006 showed the presence of the 1a, 6a and 3a strains, Lin said.
Among the prisoners, 29.2 percent carried the 1a strain, 23.5 percent had the 6a strain and 20.2 percent were infected with the 3a strain.
National health statistics showed that 96.6 percent of drug addicts have contracted hepatitis C, most of them from sharing syringes with individuals carriers of the virus.
Based on data collected in a prison survey, Lin and a team of researchers he led reached the conclusion that the new strains may have been imported from China or Southeast Asia.
“Some of the drug addicts may have visited these areas and shared syringes with addicts there, then returned to Taiwan carrying the hepatitis virus,” Lin said.
Lin said that although only a few cases of the 3a strain have been found in the general population, public health could be threatened if the foreign strains were to spread.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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