Hepatitis: Why you must get tested, vaccinated

Hepatitis poses serious threat to liver and sound health. As the world marks this year’s World Hepatitis Month, all individuals need to undergo medical examinations to confirm if they are carrying this altpotentially harmful infection as well as get vaccinated.
Hepatitis B poses serious threat to liver.  Individuals who are infected with hepatitis B may want to consider regular testing to assess the health of their liver. Hepatitis B may be more damaging to the liver than hepatitis C.

Hepatitis C is generally perceived as the greater public health problem, but this may simply be due to the fact that more people have it than have hepatitis B.  In the current study, researchers from John Hopkins University tracked the medical records of 680 men infected with either type of hepatitis. Each man was followed for up to 26 years or until death.

The study, which found that although individuals with either hepatitis C and B had similar chances of dying as a result of the infection, stated that those infected with hepatitis B had nearly twice the risk of dying from liver-related causes.

Worldwide, Hepatitis C can be common among the general population. However, with no known symptoms, contracting the disease can go more or less unknown. Hepatitis, which mainly spreads through infected food, water and blood or other body fluids, can take years or even decades for its symptoms to appear, if at all, and if left untreated, can lead to liver damage and premature death.As deadly as the different types of hepatitis is, it is worrying to see that not many people are aware of this infection or that they may have contracted the virus. An hepatitis infection is without any symptom and would only become evident when it must have caused damage to the body. “It is quiet. It is after it has caused damage that people become aware of it. People tend to say that hepatitis has occurred only when they see the yellow eye or jaundice, but usually the organism has stayed in the body for a long time.”

According to the liver expert, although the duration of time between which the infection is acquired and when disease occurs varies in individuals, the affected person may become a carrier of the virus without it affecting his or her liver. But some are not fortunate; they may as a result develop liver disease.”