Hepatitis affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, causing acute and chronic disease and killing close to 1.34 million people every year. Hepatitis causes liver diseases and can also kill a person.
World Hepatitis Day is one of eight official global public health campaigns marked by the World Health Organization (WHO), along with World Health Day, World Blood Donor Day, World Immunization Week, World Tuberculosis Day, World No Tobacco Day, World Malaria Day and World AIDS Day.
The inaugural International Hepatitis C Awareness day, coordinated by various European and Middle Eastern Patient Groups and Baby Muriel, took place on October 1st 2004, however many patient groups continued to mark 'hepatitis day' on different dates. For this reason, in 2008, the World Hepatitis Alliance in collaboration with patient groups declared May 19 the first global World Hepatitis Day.
Following the adoption of a resolution during the 63rd World Health Assembly in May 2010, World Hepatitis Day was given global endorsement as the primary focus for national and international awareness-raising efforts and the date was changed to July 28 (in honour of Nobel Laureate Baruch Samuel Blumberg, discoverer of the hepatitis B virus, who celebrates his birthday on that date). The resolution determined that "28th of July shall be designated as World Hepatitis Day in order to provide an opportunity for education and greater understanding of viral hepatitis as a global public health problem, and to stimulate the strengthening of preventive and control measures of this disease in Member States."
World Hepatitis Day is now recognised in over 100 countries each year through events such as free screenings, poster campaigns, demonstrations, concerts, talk shows, flash mobs and vaccination drives, amongst many others. Each year a report is published by the WHO and the World Hepatitis Alliance detailing all the events across the world.
World Hepatitis Day provides an opportunity to focus on actions such as:
• Raising awareness of the different forms of hepatitis and how they are transmitted;
• Strengthening prevention, screening and control of viral hepatitis and its related diseases;
• Increasing hepatitis B vaccine coverage and integration into national immunization programmes; and
• Coordinating a global response to hepatitis.
Each year focuses on a specific theme. The list of themes is as follows:
• 2011: Hepatitis affects everyone, everywhere. Know it. Confront it. Confront her.
• 2012: It’s closer than you think.
• 2013: More must be done to stop this silent killer.
• 2014: Hepatitis: Think Again.
• 2015: Prevention of viral Hepatitis. Act now.
• 2016: Know Hepatitis-Act now.
• 2017: Eliminate Hepatities.
• 2018: Test. Treat. Hepatitis.
• 2019: Invest in eliminating hepatitis.
• 2020: Hepatitis Free Future.
Source: Wikipedia
