The Advancing Clinical Treatment of Liver Disease group yesterday announced its members would work toward eradicating viral hepatitis in the nation by 2030.
The announcement was made on the eve of today’s World Hepatitis Day, which was initiated by the World Hepatitis Alliance to raise awareness about viral hepatitis, and to call for improved access to treatments, better prevention programs and government action.
National Taiwan University Medical College chair professor Chen Ding-shinn (陳定信) said that 30 years ago, Taiwan was the first nation in the world to implement a universal hepatitis B vaccination program, which significantly improved the prevention of the disease, and about a decade ago, improved medication also helped greatly reduce the number of hepatitis B carriers.
A Taiwanese medical research team discovered a combination of the drugs peginterferon and ribavirin was an effective hepatitis C treatment.
Hepatitis C treatments have been covered by the National Health Insurance system since 2003, but there are still about 600,000 people with hepatitis C in Taiwan, he said.
National Taiwan University graduate institute of clinical medicine professor Kao Jia-horng (高嘉宏) in September last year said that the participants at the first World Hepatitis Summit, held by the WHO and the World Hepatitis Alliance, released the Glasgow Declaration on Hepatitis, which set the goal of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health concern by 2030.
“The WHO estimates that there are more than 400 million people worldwide living with viral hepatitis — about 240 million with hepatitis B and about 170 million with hepatitis C — which is more than 10 times the number of people with HIV/AIDS” he said. “Deaths caused by viral hepatitis increased to more than 1.45 million worldwide in 2013.”
Kao said that the main reason that deaths caused by hepatitis are on the rise is that liver diseases often have no noticeable symptoms in their early stages, and WHO data show that only about one in every 20 people with viral hepatitis is aware of their status, while only one in every 100 infected people is receiving treatment.
Earlier this week, the Liver Disease Prevention and Treatment Research Foundation also released hepatitis C statistics collected from the foundation’s free liver-disease screening events conducted between 2011 and last year, which included 143,520 participants.
Of those screened, 6,043 people tested positive for hepatitis C, a prevalence rate of 4.2 percent, the foundation said, adding that the highest infection rate of 7.3 percent was detected in a region comprising Yunlin, Chiayi and Tainan counties, indicating that one in every 14 people in the area might have hepatitis C.
Vaccination and effective oral drugs for treatment with fewer side effects are already being implemented and prescribed, and with the establishment of a hepatitis prevention program at a national level, the goal of eliminating viral hepatitis is hopeful, Kao said, adding that under the auspices of the program, a hepatitis C elimination scheme is to be trialed in Kinmen County.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching