Fighting Hepatitis Reinforced in China

China's Ministry of Health says the country has made great achievements in preventing and controlling hepatitis. While the overall number of hepatitis cases has decreased over the last two decades, challenges still remain.

Shen Chengcheng has more.

The cases of viral hepatitis have become more and more common in China in recent years.

Hepatitis virus usually spread through human waste in water or food.

It can also spread when blood from an infected person enters the body of another person.

In 2010, there were about 1.3 million confirmed cases of the virus, in which 884 people died. It makes hepatitis virus the deadliest infectious disease in this country.

So, to protect people from the disease, Chinese government has taken a series of measures, including free vaccination for children.

As a result, the overall number of hepatitis B virus carriers has dropped by 30 million since the 1990s.

Lei Zhenglong is the deputy director of the Health Ministry's Disease Prevention and Control Bureau.

"A 2006 survey indicates the number of hepatitis virus carriers among children has declined, and the rate of the infected in total has also declined to around 7 percent. In 2008, the Health Ministry listed hepatitis vaccinations among people under 15 as a public health project. It planned to give 70 million vaccinations within three years. Now most provinces have completed this project."

Besides young people, those who are most vulnerable to contracting hepatitis, such as drug users and gay men can expect to get their free vaccination before the year 2015.

Now despite those efforts, hepatitis carriers still feel that they are sometimes stigmatized by the society.

So to protect their rights, the government stopped mandatory hepatitis tests for students and new employees early last year.

But doctors still encourage individuals to take regular health checks. They say those checkups can help to diagnose and better cure hepatitis.

Wang Yu is the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

"We protect our patients from discrimination, but on the other hand, in order to control and diminish the harm of the disease as early as possible, we should inform patients about their health condition. By early diagnosis, the liver can be prevented from damage caused by hepatitis."

Wang Yu adds the government will continue to introduce new initiatives to control hepatitis.

And those initiatives will be focused on education, adopting high-tech diagnosing methods, and providing better health services to hepatitis sufferers.

Meantime, China will also cooperate with the World Health Organization.

Hu Ting is an official at the WHO's Beijing office.

"China has a close relationship with the WHO and has played an important role on this issue since 1992. We will continue our cooperation, come up with strategy models together to fight hepatitis for the sake of human health."

And now there is a goal set for 2020, China's Health Ministry is hoping by that time, the hepatitis B virus infection rate can be reduced from the current 7 percent to 2 percent, which is considered as a low prevalence level.

For CRI, I'm Shen Chengcheng.