Gov’t asked to integrate Hepatitis, HIV treatment

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Civil Society Organizations from over 25 countries have called for governments in Africa to integrate treatment and prevention programmes for Hepatitis into other health programmes like HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis that are proving to be a success.

They pointed out that Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV-PMTCT has been successful in many countries. They called for initiating compulsory Hepatitis B and C screening for mothers during antenatal.

While presenting the declaration document, Kenneth Kabagambe a patient advocate and Director of National Organization for People Living with Hepatitis B said for Hepatitis B unlike other infections like HIV and Malaria governments, should not wait for donors to fund elimination programmes.

Dr Charles Olaro, the Director Clinical Services at the Ministry of Health says that since 2015, Hepatitis B has always been allocated 10 billion shillings in the budget. He adds that they plan to introduce a new programme where a mother seeking antenatal is able to test for HIV, hepatitis B and C, malaria and syphilis.

For Hepatitis B, he said whoever will be captured in the process depending on the outcome of the test will either be linked to care or they will be vaccinated.

Already, mass vaccination for adolescents and adults in high prevalence areas is on-going. Once the campaign is done, Olaro says a strategy for continuation will be developed.

For Hepatitis C which is equally a threat, Olaro revealed that Uganda is building on the experience from Egypt where the viral infection has completely been eliminated.

However, actual prevalence of Viral Hepatitis C in the country is unknown since no survey has been recently done but data from the National Blood Bank indicates that the prevalence of Hepatitis C among blood donors in Uganda is approximately 1.5%.

When it comes to hepatitis B, Uganda Population-based HIV Impact Assessment survey, (UPHIA, 2016) showed prevalence of Viral Hepatitis B to be at 4.1% in the population aged 15-64 years. Prevalence varies from region to region with the highest prevalence in the North at 4.6% and the lowest in Southwest at 0.8%.

However, not everyone who tests positive for hepatitis requires medicine. Olaro says the good thing with the disease is that some sufferers never develop symptoms and therefore don’t require treatment.

He said of those that are positive in Uganda only 25% to 30% need treatment, and yet the good news is that antivirals needed for treatment are manufactured in the country.

The bad side though is that the infection which spreads through blood and other body fluids just like HIV, scientists warn that it kills faster as sufferers develop liver cancer or cirrhosis.

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