Accra (Greater Accra) 24 Nov '98
Accra (Greater Accra) 24 Nov '98 Sir Elton John, a renowned British musician, has donated an undisclosed sum of money to the World Health Organisation (WHO) to help fight Hepatitis B in the developing countries. In a release issued by the WHO office in Accra, the rock star said Hepatitis B is a disease with many similarities to HIV/AIDS, both highly infectious, placing everybody at risk. It said since 1991, WHO has been promoting the use of Hepatitis B vaccine as part of national immunization programmes in all countries making it the seventh universal vaccine used by the WHO's Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI) in its fight against Hepatitis B. "EPI's goal is an 80 per cent reduction of the incidence of Hepatitis B in children by the year 2001" The release said Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland, Director-General, WHO, noted that Hepatitis B vaccine is one of the most effective and safe vaccines that has ever been developed and will virtually eliminate the disease if children everywhere are immunized. He said out of two billion people world-wide infected with the disease, most of them have recovered but more than 350 million are chronic carriers of the virus. "It is estimated that more than 70 million of these carriers will die from cirrhosis of the liver or liver cancer as a result of the infection," the release added. Dr Brundtland said great progress is being made in the control of the disease, adding that "in 1997, vaccination efforts helped to prevent 2.4 million children world-wide from contracting the dreaded disease". Dr Mark Kane of the EPI attributed the major stumbling block for the global efforts to control Hepatitis B to the fact that funding for the poorest countries in Asia and Africa ''has not materialised''. He thanked Sir Elton John for the kind gesture in giving a hand to raise the awareness of the unmet needs and appealed to other partners to help in making the vaccine available to all children in the world.
