DILI, 29 July 2025 (TATOLI) – World Hepatitis Day, marked annually on 28 July, raises awareness of viral hepatitis, an inflammation of the liver that causes severe liver disease and liver cancer. It is celebrated on the birthday of Nobel-prize winning scientist Dr Baruch Blumberg, who discovered hepatitis B virus (HBV) and developed a diagnostic test and vaccine for the virus.
This year the theme, ‘Hepatitis: Let’s Break It Down,’ calls for urgent action to dismantle the financial, social and systemic barriers – including stigma – that stand in the way of hepatitis elimination and liver cancer prevention.
In a statement, Dr Catharina Boehme, Acting Regional Director for WHO South-East Asia, warned that hepatitis continues to cause unnecessary suffering in the region, “silently leading to liver disease, cancer, and hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths each year.”
She said that across the region, an estimated 61 million people live with hepatitis B, and 9 million with hepatitis C: “Our region bears one of the highest burdens of chronic viral hepatitis globally, yet most people living with the disease remain undiagnosed and untreated.”
Every year, over 260,000 lives are lost, many due to preventable complications of hepatitis. One of the most devastating outcomes is liver cancer, because of untreated hepatitis B and C infections.
“With limited access to early diagnosis and treatment, most liver cancer cases in our region are detected late, when curative options are no longer viable,” Boehme said.
She stressed that hepatitis testing and treatment services must be scaled up, decentralized to primary care: “We have the tools to prevent these infections: safe and effective hepatitis B vaccines, affordable diagnostics, highly effective hepatitis B medicines, and the game-changing hepatitis C direct-acting antiviral (DAA) medicines that cure the infection guidelines simplified, to reduce the toll of liver cancer due to hepatitis B and C.” “However, problems persist with the complexity and fragmentation in service delivery, lack of services at primary healthcare clinics, poor uptake of services, out-of-pocket expenses, limited awareness, and stigma.”
“We must embed hepatitis services within essential health packages, leverage primary health care platforms, and align responses with maternal and child health, HIV, STIs, TB, non-communicable diseases, blood safety, infection prevention and control, occupational health and universal health coverage efforts,” Boehme said. “We have to prioritize hepatitis B birth-dose and completion of the vaccination schedule, integrated safe motherhood services, harm reduction services, and community-based outreach to close the equity gap.”
Boehme highlighted encouraging progress, with several countries in the region adopting simplified service models, integrating hepatitis care into essential health packages, and extending social health insurance to cover hepatitis services. “These efforts need to be scaled and sustained with strong political will and investment.”
“Together, ‘Let’s Break It Down’ by removing the complexity, ending the silence, and delivering on our promise to eliminate hepatitis by 2030,” she urged.
TATOLI
