WHO reported 3,500 deaths from viral hepatitis worldwide every day
The World Health Organization (WHO) presented a report on viral hepatitis Global hepatitis report 2024 and issued a press release with its main theses. According to the document, deaths from these infections in 2022 increased to 1.3 million people per year, which is comparable to tuberculosis (the leading cause of death from infectious diseases).
Viral hepatitis is caused by five known unrelated viruses. Hepatitis A and E are transmitted through water and food; they are acute and relatively rarely cause death. Hepatitis B and C are blood-borne or sexually transmitted, they often progress to a chronic form, the outcome of which can be cirrhosis or liver cancer and death - these are predominantly responsible for deaths from viral hepatitis. Hepatitis D does not develop on its own, but complicates the course of hepatitis B. There are vaccines for hepatitis A and B; hepatitis C can be treated with drugs, but they are expensive.
According to a WHO report presented at the World Hepatitis Summit with data from 187 countries, deaths from viral hepatitis have increased from 1.1 million in 2019 to 1.3 million in 2022, or about 3,500 deaths per day. 83 percent of these are due to hepatitis B; 17 percent are due to hepatitis C.
According to updated estimates, 254 million people on Earth currently have hepatitis B and 50 million have hepatitis C. Half of these cases are in people between the ages of 30 and 54; 12 percent are children and adolescents under 18. 58 percent of patients are male. Nearly two-thirds of the global number of patients with chronic viral hepatitis live in 10 countries: Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, Vietnam, and India.
Meanwhile, the number of new cases has fallen slightly - from 2.5 million in 2019 to 2.2 million in 2022 - but remains high (more than 6,000 cases per day). 1.2 million people are infected with hepatitis B and one million with hepatitis C each year. 63 percent of new cases occur in the WHO African Region, but only 18 percent of newborns there receive hepatitis B vaccination.
Also noted in the report is the lack of availability of viral hepatitis treatment and significant disparities in access to it. In most countries for which information is available, drugs for hepatitis B control (e.g. tenofovir, available as a generic) and radical hepatitis C treatment (sofosbuvir/daclatasvir) are significantly more expensive than their global reference prices. Sixty percent of countries offer full or partial free viral hepatitis testing and treatment, half as much in the most vulnerable African region.