World Hepatitis Day 2020: Finding and helping the youths among the Millions

Fishing out the Hepatitis viruses in the unsearched areas is the priority this year.

The theme of this year's World Hepatitis Day, 2020, "Find the missing millions", is aimed at searching for potential carriers of the virus because without finding the undiagnosed and linking them to care, millions will continue to suffer, and lives will be lost. This "finding" does include youths in as much as it includes people of all ages worldwide. Worldwide, 290 million people are living with viral hepatitis unaware (worldhepatitisday.org).

For youths, prevention of lifestyle-related diseases and promotion of physical and mental well-being in adolescents require an understanding of how life situations place adolescents at risk of contamination. The most important risk factors for hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection are sexual activity with more than one partner and injecting drug use. HBV infection in general is associated with indicators of sexual activity, e.g. number of sexual partners, years of sexual activity and the occurrence of other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

A major strategy to curb infections could be providing immunity from infection before risk-taking behavior. Just as for other sexually transmitted infections, this can be best achieved by universal vaccination of young adolescents or infants, or both groups. Other methods to prevent the disease include not sharing toothbrushes or razors nor using someone else's needle if you inject illicit drugs, only get tattoos and piercings from professional shops that sterilize their equipment and last but not the least, use a condom when you have sex.

An article published on 'Risk of Hepatitis B in Adolescence and Young Adulthood' (A Meheus. Vaccine. 1995.) states that in countries of low hepatitis B virus (HBV) endemicity, infection occurs mainly in adolescents and young adults (15-34 years old). The most important risk factors for infection are heterosexual activity, homosexual activity and intravenous drug use as more than 50% of infections are spread in this way. The highest concentrations of HBV are found in blood of infected individuals, but HBsAg (Hepatitis B surface antigen) is also present in semen and vaginal and cervical secretions, which forms the biological explanation for sexual transmission of the virus especially in youths.

A study to evaluate the prevalence of the co-infection between the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV), and the prevalence of factors associated with HCV transmission in a rural community in Cameroon by BMC Research Notes in July 2018 showed the following results. The age range of 174 participants in the study was 13-77 years. The prevalence of HCV/HIV co-infection was 1.7% The prevalence of HCV and HIV were 6.3% and 6.9% respectively. Histories of scarification (62.1%), multiple sex partners (31.0%) and sexually transmitted diseases (66.1%) were the most common risk factors of HCV transmission in this study.

Hypertext links in other of appearance:

*http://reglo.org/posts/journee-internationale-de-lutte-contre-l-hepatite-5058

*http://reglo.org/posts/drug-consumption-and-hiv-aids-transmission-6168