JEDDAH, 23 April 2006 — The preventive medicine department of the National Guard Health Affairs in the Western Region is hosting today a seminar entitled “Hepatitis: Concepts and Meanings.”
The seminar takes place under the support of Princess Adila bint Abdullah, chairman of the National Charity Organization for Home Health Care. Its purpose is to raise public awareness of hepatitis and correct misconceptions.
Hepatitis is a viral inflammation of the liver. Several different viruses, called A, B, C, D, and E, cause acute, or short-term, viral hepatitis. Hepatitis B, C, and D can lead to chronic hepatitis, in which the infection is prolonged, sometimes lifelong, and possibly fatal. Hepatitis A and E are spread through food and water while B, C and D are transmitted through the blood and by having unprotected sex.
Hepatitis A is the most common in the world. It affects around 1.4 million people annually, especially when people travel in countries where the rate of infection is high.
Hepatitis B is, after tobacco, the second leading cause of cancer and it is more contagious than the HIV virus. Hepatitis C is the most prevalent liver disease in the world with 270 to 300 million cases. The World Health Organization considers Hepatitis C an epidemic. It is often called the “silent” epidemic because it can infect a patient for decades before being discovered. Some 20 to 30 percent of people with chronic Hepatitis C will eventually face life-threatening symptoms.
In Saudi Arabia, according to recent statistics, there are 500,000 people with Hepatitis C, representing 2.7 percent of world’s Hepatitis patients. There is no vaccine for Hepatitis C; the only way to prevent it is to reduce the risk of exposure to the virus.
“The seminar targets all sectors of society and to ensure that the contents and meanings reach all sectors, the National Guard Health Affairs has arranged with the Education Administration in Jeddah to send a teacher from every high school to attend the seminar. These teachers are then expected to use what they learn at the seminar to educate their students about the disease,” said Dr. Khadija Salim, community medicine consultant and the seminar’s coordinator.
