World Hepatitis Day Initiatives
The World Hepatitis Alliance supports campaigners and patient organisations around the world to help make a difference to the lives of the millions of people living with viral hepatitis and to prevent new infections. To find out more on what is going on in your country, use the map below to find local organisations, World Hepatitis Day initiatives and other initiatives.
You can also look at our ‘Wall of Stories’ and submit your own personal experience of living with hepatitis or find other community resources including an Online Scrapbook and our latest Newsletters. The This is hepatitis... blog features bloggers from around the world talking about their experiences with hepatitis.
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Country: Nigeria
City: Lagos
Type: WHD
Nigeria - WHD 2011
To mark World Hepatitis Day in Nigeria, medical experts called for a nationwide mass screening and vaccination campaign lead by federal, state and local governments to make sure that the neonatal hepatitis B vaccine is available since mother to child is the major route of transmission in the country.
At a one-day media roundtable and skills-building session on the hepatitis epidemic in Nigeria coordinated by the Health Communications and Development Initiative, several medical doctors under the aegis of the Society for Gastroenterology and Hepatology in Nigeria said that almost 20 million Nigerians were infected and about five million would die of the consequences.
Doctor Olufunmilayo Lesi from the University of Lagos Teaching Hospital stressed that with a prevalence of 13.7 per cent or 19 million Nigerians infected, hepatitis B was a bigger problem than HIV/AIDS, which had a prevalence of about 4.7 per cent. Dr Lesi also said the virus was the second most important cause of cancer in the country. Furthermore, the event as well as several declarations about hepatitis and its status in Nigeria, was reported in the national media.
As part of this year’s activities, the group Chagro-CareTrust CCT organised an awareness campaign and free screening for hepatitis B and C for teachers and students of the Government Junior Science Secondary School in Jalingo Taraba, north-east Nigeria, where over 100 people were tested.
