). And when she visited health facilities in the country, Tousignant saw no posters or pamphlets about the disease, even in blood-donation facilities, one of the few places where carriers of the virus might receive a diagnosis.Although underfunding is a major reason for the neglect of hepatitis B treatment in Africa, it’s not the only one. Even South Africa, which boasts one of Africa’s best-resourced healthcare systems, struggles to deal with the disease.
The pandemic has hampered hepatitis B programmes on a global scale. Diagnosis and treatment services for hepatitis B and C were disrupted in 43% of countries surveyed by the WHO one year into the pandemic. Gavi, a global public–private alliance that funds vaccination programmes in low-income countries, had looked into including hepatitis B birth-dose vaccines in 2018 under the range of jabs it supports.
“What COVID-19 has taught us is that, once the resources are there, things can develop very quickly,” she says. “Next year, if the COVID-19 situation is under better control, then the platforms established for it could be redirected to other diseases.” Egypt launched an ambitious programme to control viral hepatitis in 2006. It focused on hepatitis C, which affected at least 10% of the country’s population at the time. Since then, state-funded diagnosis and treatment programmes have been set up, and in 2016, Egypt introduced hepatitis B vaccinations at birth for all babies — making it an outlier in Africa.Like other African countries, Egypt struggles to identify everyone who needs treatment.
This is tragic😔 Is the World Health Organization going to do something about it? I am sure this is due to increased economic differences in Africa.
😥
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