HEPATITIS B - A SILENT KILLER
HEPATITIS B - A SILENT KILLER
While most of us have been focused on AIDS, a silent epidemic is killing millions of people around the World. Though this killer is a blood-borne virus much like the AIDS-causing virus HIV, there is no media outcry associated with it, no demand for more money to fund research, no glitzy celebrities jumping on the bandwagon.
Instead, victims of this disease suffer in obscurity. The hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a 100 times more infectious than the HIV virus. Hepatitis B is a viral inflammation of the liver that has been called "the silent epidemic" because it quietly causes devastation without the victim realizing that anything is wrong until the damage is very advanced.
"It is an infectious disease that is reaching epidemic proportions in our country and beyond", says expert doctors. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) reports, there are almost 200 crore people around the globe who are already infected with this deadly virus. Out of these, about 35 crore patients are suffering from disease which is in an advanced stage.
Please visit the website for Hepatitis B for more details - HEPATITIS B FOUNDATION
Why has hepatitis B virus become such a grave threat to human life? Did you ever think about it?
The wily virus can infect a person through any of the following means:
1. The barber's razor
2. While getting ears or noses pierced, or any part of the body tattoed.
3. At the hospital or a clinic where infected needles have not been properly sterilized.
4. Through contaminated water.
5. Sexual intercourse with a person who is a carrier but does not show any symptoms of the disease.
6. Through transfusion of infected blood.
7. From mother to baby, and possibly through bugs and mosquitoes, though the last transmission route has not been proved by doctors.
In fact, the deadly virus is so dangerous that a person can get infected through merely 0.00004 ml of infected blood. In contrast., for a person to contract AIDS there must be at least 10,000 times that amount of tainted blood or body fluid. The virus is a silent killer. Though 90 per cent of the carriers overcome the invader soon after infection, about 10 per cent of them, mostly infected during early childhood, become permanent carriers.
Once ensconced in the system, the virus will work on the body's immune system continuously.
There is an unfortunate part of the disease, that the victims do not know they are infected until the virus is so deeply entrenched that recovery is difficult.
While most of us have been focused on AIDS, a silent epidemic is killing millions of people around the World. Though this killer is a blood-borne virus much like the AIDS-causing virus HIV, there is no media outcry associated with it, no demand for more money to fund research, no glitzy celebrities jumping on the bandwagon.
Instead, victims of this disease suffer in obscurity. The hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a 100 times more infectious than the HIV virus. Hepatitis B is a viral inflammation of the liver that has been called "the silent epidemic" because it quietly causes devastation without the victim realizing that anything is wrong until the damage is very advanced.
"It is an infectious disease that is reaching epidemic proportions in our country and beyond", says expert doctors. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) reports, there are almost 200 crore people around the globe who are already infected with this deadly virus. Out of these, about 35 crore patients are suffering from disease which is in an advanced stage.
Please visit the website for Hepatitis B for more details - HEPATITIS B FOUNDATION
Why has hepatitis B virus become such a grave threat to human life? Did you ever think about it?
The wily virus can infect a person through any of the following means:
1. The barber's razor
2. While getting ears or noses pierced, or any part of the body tattoed.
3. At the hospital or a clinic where infected needles have not been properly sterilized.
4. Through contaminated water.
5. Sexual intercourse with a person who is a carrier but does not show any symptoms of the disease.
6. Through transfusion of infected blood.
7. From mother to baby, and possibly through bugs and mosquitoes, though the last transmission route has not been proved by doctors.
In fact, the deadly virus is so dangerous that a person can get infected through merely 0.00004 ml of infected blood. In contrast., for a person to contract AIDS there must be at least 10,000 times that amount of tainted blood or body fluid. The virus is a silent killer. Though 90 per cent of the carriers overcome the invader soon after infection, about 10 per cent of them, mostly infected during early childhood, become permanent carriers.
Once ensconced in the system, the virus will work on the body's immune system continuously.
There is an unfortunate part of the disease, that the victims do not know they are infected until the virus is so deeply entrenched that recovery is difficult.
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