New Delhi: India had over 3.5 crore cases of viral hepatitis in 2022, accounting for 11.6 percent of the total disease burden globally that year, according to the World Health Organisation’s 2024 Global Hepatitis Report released Tuesday.
The disease — characterised by inflammation of the liver — is the second-leading infectious cause of deaths globally — with 1.3 million deaths per year, the same as tuberculosis, a top spreadable killer.
Hepatitis can be caused by the five known hepatitis viruses – A, B, C, D and E – but the infections caused by hepatitis B and C are responsible for 96 percent of overall hepatitis mortality.
As per the report, India, which was second only to China in the viral hepatitis burden, registered 2.98 crore hepatitis B cases in 2022 while the number of hepatitis C infections stood at 55 lakh.
New data from 187 countries showed that the estimated number of deaths from viral hepatitis increased from 1.1 million in 2019 to 1.3 million in 2022. Of this, 83 percent were caused by hepatitis B, and 17 percent by hepatitis C.
Every day, there are 3,500 people dying globally due to hepatitis B and C infections, said the WHO report.
“This report paints a troubling picture: despite progress globally in preventing hepatitis infections, deaths are rising because far too few people with hepatitis are being diagnosed and treated,” WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
Updated WHO estimates indicate that 254 million people lived with hepatitis B and 50 million with hepatitis C in 2022. Half the burden of chronic hepatitis B and C infections is among people between 30 and 54 years old, with 12 percent among children under 18 years. Men account for 58 percent of all cases.
The report also underlined that Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation and Vietnam, collectively shoulder nearly two-thirds of the global burden of hepatitis B and C.
India’s hepatitis challenge
The WHO report said that in 2022, 98,305 people died due to hepatitis B while 26,206 succumbed to hepatitis C. Worryingly, only 2.4 percent of those infected in the country had received diagnosis coverage, as per the report.
Hepatitis B and C are transmitted by unsafe injection practices and through contaminated syringes and needles, infected blood and blood products, sexual transmission, from infected mother to child, according to the National Action Plan on hepatitis by the Union ministry of health and family welfare.
Chronic hepatitis B infection, which is vaccine preventable, accounts for 40 to 50 percent of hepatocellular carcinoma (a type of liver cancer) and 20 to 30 percent of cirrhosis cases in India, it says.
Hepatitis B vaccine in India, as part of the Centre’s Universal Immunization Programme, was piloted in 2002-03 and then scaled up in the entire country in 2010 to protect children from the acute infection.
It is now provided as part of the pentavalent vaccine at 6, 10 & 14 weeks apart from the birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine.
However, a 2020 study from India said that although the coverage of third-dose hepatitis B vaccine has reached 86 percent in the country, the birth-dose coverage was only 45 percent in 2015 despite high rates of institutional deliveries.
This is an updated version of the story.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)