One thing that AIDS,
malaria, and tuberculosis all have in common is their deadliness. AIDS
killed 1.47 million people in 2010. But did you know that viral
hepatitis (hepatitis B & C combined) killed 1.44 million that same
year?
Monday is World Hepatitis Day
I walked into the first day of my internship ready to take on what I
thought were the major public health crises of the world – malaria,
AIDS, avian flu. Instead, my supervisor gave me a hefty stack of
literature on hepatitis B. Sure, as a premed student I knew that
hepatitis had something to do with the liver, but I was shocked to find
out that hepatitis B was the most common serious liver infection in the
world—one that chronically affects over 350 million people worldwide,
including 1 in 12 Asian Americans—and I had never heard of it.
As a 21-year old
Asian American who is passionate about global health, I felt cheated to
only now discover that there is an infectious disease disproportionately
affecting my community. Somebody should have told me about this! To
then find out that it was completely vaccine-preventable – somebody
should have told everyone about this!
About halfway
through my internship, I found out that my grandfather died from viral
hepatitis that he contracted through a blood transfusion. Suddenly the
disease had a face, and it was a smiling man with wide rimmed glasses
who used to sit me on his lap and feed me popcorn. It now feels like my
duty to spread the word.
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Labels: awareness, WHD