Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Hepatitis kill more people than AIDS

Hepatitis is the most deadly infectious disease out there. Treatments and vaccines exist but are too expensive or insufficiently used.
Viral hepatitis kill more people than AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria. This is the conclusion of a study from the Imperial College London and the University of Washington conducted between 1990 and 2013.
The researchers scanned the five forms of the disease (A, B, C, D and E) in 183 countries. They observed a 63% increase in the number of deaths due to hepatitis, from 890,000 in 1990 to 1.45 million in 2013.
The same year, AIDS killed 1.3 million people, tuberculosis caused the death of 1.4 million, and malaria accounted for 855,000 dead bodies. These infectious diseases have had their death curve decrease, while that of hepatitis keeps climbing. Countries with high and middle income were particularly affected in the 1990s, but the disease is now also extending to poor countries.
The disease is transmitted through bodily fluids, as well as foods or beverages contaminated with feces (forms A and E). It causes cirrhosis and liver cancer, with, for symptoms, fatigue, jaundice and nausea. But more often, there are no signs or symptoms of to the first serious complications, which makes management difficult. A vaccine against hepatitis B exists but few have access to it. Furthermore, 96% of deaths from hepatitis are caused by the type C of the disease.
Too little money is invested in the treatments compared to other diseases. A comprehensive action plan for hepatitis was approved in May by the World Health Assembly and must now be implemented. Advanced treatments for hepatitis C are also expensive: for poor countries, but also for the rich countries. Most patients are thus reachable.
The study also looked at the number of years of life lost, by comparing the age of death to the maximum life expectancy in a country. Result: 41 million life years less for all those infected. 870,000 of there years are years of life disability. For the research team, it’s urgent now to take international measures to counter this trend.

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