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    • News
    • News: Global health

    Global Hepatitis Network against 'silent crisis'

    The World Health Organization has announced a new global movement to curb hepatitis, the “silent crisis” that – like HIV/AIDS – claims up to 1.4 million lives each year. Devex talks to the chair of the main group fighting the disease in Asia-Pacific.

    By Johanna Morden // 11 June 2013
    A woman looks over a relative with advanced hepatits in El Sereif hospital in North Darfur, Sudan. The first Global Hepatitis Network was launched on June 7 in Singapore. Photo by: Albert González Farran / UNAMID / CC BY-NC-ND

    Hepatitis may not be as notorious a disease as HIV/AIDS, but it kills almost as many people each year.

    The World Health Organization, World Hepatitis Alliance and the Coalition for the Eradication of Viral Hepatitis in Asia-Pacific (CEVHAP) unveiled on Friday in Singapore the first Global Hepatitis Network to foster international collaboration in stemming viral hepatitis, a deadly liver disease said to afflict over 500 million people worldwide.

    The network will help build capacity and strengthen national, regional and global action in tackling viral hepatitis through:

    • Raising awareness

    • Promoting partnerships

    • Mobilizing resources

    • Evidence-based policy and data

    • Prevention of transmission

    • Screening, care and treatment

    About 1.4 million people die each year of the disease linked to liver cancer that comes in five types, according to new data from the Global Burden of Disease Study.

    Of these, over a million deaths occur in Asia-Pacific, a region that hosts three times as many people dying from viral hepatitis as from HIV/AIDS each year and nine times as many malaria deaths.

    ‘Silent crisis’

    CEVHAP chair and co-founder Ding-Shinn Chen told Devex ahead of the launch that the new Global Hepatitis Network marks a milestone in bringing much-needed attention to the unfolding hepatitis “silent crisis” across the globe.

    “My hope is that the new commitment this network represents will lead to governments adopting their own national strategies, with the support of experts from within the network. A lot of this work of course requires funding and that’s where CEVHAP is hoping that international donors and nongovernmental organizations will play their part,” he said.

    Chen called for reforms in addressing the killer disease in the areas of improving available resources, extending existing HIV/AIDS frameworks to viral hepatitis, and increasing access to medicines, which remains a major challenge in developing countries.

    Viral hepatitis, he explained, is a global problem, and its exclusion from initiatives such as the MDGs “has pushed viral hepatitis to the fringes of global health.”

    “While malaria is rightly considered an African emergency, a silent crisis is occurring in Asia-Pacific as a result of viral hepatitis,” added Chen.

    Read more development aid news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive top international development headlines from the world’s leading donors, news sources and opinion leaders — emailed to you FREE every business day.

    • Global Health
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    About the author

    • Johanna Morden

      Johanna Morden

      Johanna Morden is a community development worker by training and a global development journalist by profession. As a former Devex staff writer based in Manila, she covered the Asian Development Bank as well as Asia-Pacific's aid community at large. Johanna has written for a variety of international publications, covering social issues, disasters, government, ICT, business, and the law.

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