New World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on hepatitis B, to be presented at an international conference in Lisbon on Tuesday, apply to adolescents.
Speaking to Lusa, the director of the National Viral Hepatitis Program, Rui Tato Marinho, explained that the new WHO guidelines are facilitating access to hepatitis B treatment by increasing the number of people included in hepatitis B treatment and reaching adolescents.
Tato Marinho recalled that the spread to teenagers does not affect Portugal that much, which has been vaccinating all children for more than 20 years, but recalled that there are countries in which young people aged 20 or 30 are already developing liver cancer.
“This treatment is not a cure, like hepatitis C, but it controls and prevents cirrhosis, prevents cancer and saves lives. This is a very silent disease,” he warned.
Tato Mariño stressed the importance of choosing Lisbon for this meeting, which brings together representatives of ministries and health professionals, civil society organizations, political decision-makers, scientists and people who live or have lived with hepatitis from more than 100 countries.
The goal of the 2024 World Hepatitis Summit is to discuss and achieve the WHO goal of eliminating hepatitis by 2030.
“WHO is making enormous efforts to combat hepatitis. Many years ago this was not a priority, but now it is. There are 250 million people in the world,” said Rui Tato Mariño.
WHO recommendations, he added, help diagnose hepatitis B because there is now a new line of rapid tests that are still quite expensive but do not allow people to go to hospitals or laboratories.
The person in charge recalled that although there are not enough of them, some of them are already offered by the General Directorate of Health.
He also said the new guidelines help “define ways to make a diagnosis, which is to know what’s going on in that person’s liver, through testing, without the need for a biopsy.”
These tests have been carried out in Portugal for “many years” and can tell in two minutes whether a person has cirrhosis of the liver.
The specialist also emphasized that this conference and new WHO recommendations “classify hepatitis B to the first stage of the disease.”
“We know that 250 million people are infected worldwide, and there are countries in the world where 10% of the population has hepatitis B,” he said.
He also believes the international conference, which runs until Thursday, will be an opportunity to show that Portugal “can become a global benchmark for good practice in society”, an example for models of screening and care for “very difficult patients”. “reach” the population, which is possible with the support of non-governmental organizations that are on the ground and know the population.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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