Over 15m Pakistanis affected by Hepatitis B, C

Islamabad
Over 15 million people in the country are affected with Hepatitis B and C, making liver cancer the fastest growing cancer in the country, a leading hepatologist said.
Dr Muzzaffar Lateef Gill, Professor of Medicine and Gastroenterology, said the majority of untreated and relapse cases are at risk for progressing to liver cancer.
In an interview on the occasion of the World Hepatitis Day Dr Gill told APP that 400 million people in the world population are exposed to hepatitis and every fifth patient who has chronic hepatitis, does not know about it.
He said viral hepatitis kills 1.4 million people each year and majority of these deaths were because of hepatocellular carcinoma.
The message on World Hepatitis Day from the standpoint of Pakistan is “Get tested, vaccinated and treated,” he added.
Dr Gill emphasised the need for promoting awareness among people about hepatitis and its spread, prevention and treatment.
He said chronic hepatitis is a totally preventable disease and said it is responsibility of health care provider to observe foolproof measures to sterilise surgical and dental treatment equipment besides focusing on screening of blood products.
He said it was very unfortunate in Pakistan that the dynamics of Hepatitis C treatment could not be understood appropriately. He said for last 10 years, Hepatitis C patients were being treated with substandard Interferon, which resulted into poor outcomes such as relapses and non-responder patients.
Professor Gill expressed his concern over the same mistake of allowing and registering again and again the substandard oral medication for Hepatitis C in Pakistan.
He regretted that quality of treatment was not being given to patients of hepatitis at the public hospitals. “We need to make absolutely sure we provide absolute gold standard treatment to our patients,” Dr Gill said and stressed equal treatment to all patients, whether they are able or not to afford costly treatment. He stressed private-public partnerships in true spirit with honesty and sincerity to get rid of this disease.
Dr Gill mentioned that Sovaldi was an important breakthrough in hepatitis C treatment being a new kind of oral antiviral treatment for Hepatitis C virus (HCV).
Based on its safety and efficacy data, he said Sovaldi was approved by the FDA as a breakthrough treatment in December 2013, and was given an accelerated approval by the European Union authorities a month later in January 2014.