Viral hepatitis kills over 1m globally yearly – Oyo commissioner

Oyo state Commissioner for Health Dr. Bashir Bello on Tuesday, said that viral hepatitis causes more than one million deaths yearly across the world.

The Commissioner stated this while speaking at a press briefing to flag off community testing and awareness creation on Hepatitis for year 2020 World Hepatitis day

Dr Bello pointed out that the commemoration of the World Hepatitis Day is meant to raise awareness of the problem of viral hepatitis, which is an inflammation of the liver that causes a range of health problems, including liver cancer that its impact is more than 325 million people worldwide

The Commissioner for Health stated that the theme for this year’s World Health Organization (WHO) Hepatitis Day was to find the missing millions and preventing infections among newborns as well as ” to create an opportunity to educate people about the burden of the infections and what people need to do to prevent the infections”

“Health is one of the major basic pillar of this current administration, that is why the governor pay full attention to it and gives it necessary support, prevention of disease is part of the program of the state government,” he said.

Speaking further, the Commissioner maintained that as a way of curbing hepatitis, he said preventive health is one of the top priorities of the present government.

According to Dr Bello, Oyo state government in collaboration with technical partners (UNICF and WHO) provides financial and technical assistance to immunization programs of which hepatitis B is among for the children across the state

The Commissioner however,  charged stakeholders to join hands with the government in the fight against viral hepatitis B and work closely as a team towards improving community awareness of the different forms of hepatitis as well as how they are transmitted, strengthen prevention, ensuring wide spread screening and linkage to care which is the most important gap to be addressed in order to achieve global elimination goal by 2030.

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