Awareness campaign, walk, mark Hepatitis Day

Rawalpindi : Centre for Liver and Digestive Diseases (CLD) here at Holy Family Hospital (HFH) in town arranged an awareness walk and a lecture along with activities related to awareness about hepatitis to mark World Hepatitis Day observed around the globe on Saturday.

The activities were organized by CLD Holy Family Hospital in collaboration with Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi Medical University, Society for Therapeutic Endoscopy Pakistan (STEP), Pakistan Society of Hepatology (PSH) and Shifa4u which is an American Tele-physicians Project in Pakistan.

This year the theme of the official World Health Organisation World Hepatitis Day is “Test. Treat. Hepatitis.”. The WHO has set the target of elimination of hepatitis B and C from the world by 2030. Low coverage of testing and treatment is the most important gap to be addressed in order to achieve the global elimination goals by 2030.

At the HFH, the proceedings were started with an awareness lecture delivered by Vice Chancellor Rawalpindi Medical University Professor Muhammad Umer highlighting the theme of the day “Find the Missing Millions”, a theme set by World Hepatitis Alliance. Formal inauguration was done by cutting the cake depicting the world hepatitis slogan by Additional Medical Superintendent at HFH Dr Tariq Masood Niazi.

The organizers informed the audience that Pakistan is number two in the world with hepatitis C virus prevalence of 5.8 per cent sharing a major disease burden.

Awareness walk was organised starting from Rawalpindi Medical College and ending at administrative block of HFH. Doctors from different specialties, medical students, paramedical staff and patients participated in the walk. They were holding banners bearing the slogan ‘find the missing millions’ and other awareness material. Informative brochures and booklets were distributed, highlighting preventive measures and importance of screening and testing in local language. Huge banners with similar information were also displayed in all tertiary care hospitals of Rawalpindi. The organisers also arranged free screening and vaccination camp that screened as many as 400 people and administered vaccine for hepatitis B to 1,000 people.