World Hepatitis Day
This past Sunday, July 28th marks World Hepatitis Day, a day created to help raise awareness of the global burden of viral hepatitis and influence real change. The focus of this year’s World Hepatitis Day is to continue the campaign to #FindTheMissingMillions. Introduced last year, this 3-year campaign was created to:
Raise awareness of the importance of increasing diagnosis and linkage to care
Encourage people to get tested
Underscore the need for national testing policies
Educate and inform wider audiences about viral hepatitis (prevention, treatment and testing)
Why do we need to find the missing millions? In 2016, a global initiative was put forth by the World Health Organization to eliminate the threat of viral hepatitis by 2030 – however only a handful of countries are currently on track to meet this goal, and Canada is not one of them. In order to achieve elimination, the 290 million people worldwide who are unaware they are living with viral hepatitis need to be diagnosed and linked to care.
For more information about finding the missing millions, check out the video created by the World Hepatitis Alliance for this year’s World Hepatitis Day, or visit their website at http://www.worldhepatitisday.org/#current-campaign-wrap.
