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More than 15,000 Ghanaians died of Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C- related liver diseases in 2022, indicating 42 deaths per day with majority being young men and women who suffered from liver failure and cancer.
According to a report by graphic.com.gh, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, disclosed this at the Ghana Hepatitis Stakeholders' Conference 2024 in Accra on Wednesday, September 18, 2024.
He indicated that the country had a high burden of chronic Hepatitis B, and to a lesser extent, chronic Hepatitis C, both of which caused significant illness and premature deaths from liver-related conditions for thousands of Ghanaians.
The high burden, he noted appeared to be disproportionately shared between the northern and southern parts of the country, with the northern part having a higher burden.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye said even though the country had a high burden of hepatitis B and C, very few of these had been diagnosed due to low testing capacity and inadequate reporting noting that it had been estimated that every year, about eight percent of babies were born to mothers who tested positive for hepatitis B at the antenatal clinics.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) Representative to Ghana, Dr Frank Lule, said globally, about 300 million people live with the disease, with more than a million new infections being recorded annually.
“If you divide that, we are getting more than 3,000 people dying every day because of chronic viral hepatitis. And we are at a time when we have so many tools at our disposal to do something about the disease.
“We now have the diagnostics. The medicines available to us have never been cheaper than what they are now so I think we are at a time when we can really do something about this,” he explained.
He said eliminating the disease requires concerted and coordinated interventions, and therefore, urged stakeholders to engage the control programme to identify available gaps to help eliminate the disease in the country.
According to the WHO, hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver that is caused by a variety of infectious viruses and non-infectious agents leading to a range of health problems, some of which can be fatal.
There are five main strains of the hepatitis virus, referred to as types A, B, C, D and E. While they all cause liver disease, they differ in important ways including modes of transmission, severity of the illness, geographical distribution and prevention methods.
JKB/ADG
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