One life, one liver

‘One life, one liver’ is a wonderful slogan propa gated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to generate awareness among the people of the world towards maintaining a healthy liver. The slogan has been raised to particularly mark World Hepatitis Day, with WHO calling for scaling up testing and treatment for viral hepatitis and, in the process, issuing a warning that the disease could kill more people than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV combined by 2040 if the current infection trend is allowed to continue. WHO has also stated that while a particu-lar date—July 28—is designated as World Hepatitis Day (WHD), the fact remains that every day, and for that mat-ter, every hour, is important for ensuring that one’s liver remains healthy and disease-free. Viral hepatitis, ac-cording to the WHO, has already emerged as a “global burden,” because of which it has become crucial to initiate a campaign to influence real change in the habits and lifestyles of the people. Hepatitis, it has been stated, causes serious damage to the liver, leading to cancer, and kills over one million people across the globe every year. It has also been pointed out that of the five types of hepatitis infection, hepatitis B and C are the two most danger-ous ones, causing most of the disease and deaths. The good news, however, is that of the two, hepatitis C can be cured. But that should not be a reason to rejoice. The fact remains that only 21 percent of people living with hepa-titis C have been diagnosed, and only 13 percent have received curative treatment. Similarly, only about ten per-cent of people living with chronic hepatitis B are diagnosed, and only two percent of those infected are receiving life-saving medicine.