World Hepatitis Day – Know everything about the day & its importance here.
World Hepatitis Day |
World Hepatitis Day, observed on July 28 every year, aims to
raise global awareness of hepatitis — a group of infectious diseases known as
Hepatitis A, B, C, D, and E — and encourage prevention, diagnosis and
treatment. Hepatitis affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide, causing
acute and chronic disease and killing close to 1.4 million people every year.
World
Hepatitis Day is one of eight official global public health campaigns marked by
the World Health Organization (WHO), along with World Health Day, World Blood
Donor Day, World Immunization Week, World Tuberculosis Day, World No Tobacco
Day, World Malaria Day and World AIDS Day.
Hepatitis
groups, patients and advocates worldwide take part in events on 28 July.
Notably in 2012, a Guinness World Record was created when 12,588 people from 20
countries did the Three Wise Monkeys actions on World Hepatitis Day to signify
the willful ignorance of the disease.
The
inaugural International Hepatitis C Awareness day, coordinated by various
European and Middle Eastern Patient Groups and Baby Muriel, took place on
October 1, 2004, However many patient groups continued to mark 'hepatitis day'
on disparate dates. For this reason in 2008, the World Hepatitis Alliance in
collaboration with patient groups declared May 19 the
first global World Hepatitis Day.
Following
the adoption of a resolution during the 63rd World Health Assembly in May 2010,
World Hepatitis Day was given global endorsement as the primary focus for
national and international awareness-raising efforts and the date was changed
to July 28 (in honour of Nobel Laureate Baruch Samuel Blumberg, discoverer of
the hepatitis B virus, who celebrates his birthday on that date). The
resolution resolves that "28 July shall be designated as World Hepatitis
Day in order to provide an opportunity for education and greater understanding
of viral hepatitis as a global public health problem, and to stimulate the
strengthening of preventive and control measures of this disease in Member
States."
World
Hepatitis Day is now recognised in over 100 countries each year through events
such as free screenings, poster campaigns, demonstrations, concerts, talk
shows, flash mobs and vaccination drives, amongst many others. Each year a
report is published by the WHO and the World Hepatitis Alliance detailing all
the events across the world.
Comments
Post a Comment