China has started a two-year educational program aimed at
preventing the spread of Hepatitis B from mother to child in four
counties of west China's Shaanxi and Gansu provinces.
"The program is the first to be carried out in China's rural
areas for women of childbearing age," said the program organizer on
Saturday who added that in China Hepatitis B is often transmitted
from mother to child.
Many people are Hepatitis B carriers but do not suffer any
symptoms of the disease. This makes it difficult to stop its
spread, especially when expectant mothers are unaware of their own
condition or how the disease is transmitted.
The US$200,000 program, funded by the Bristol-Myers Squibb
Foundation, is organized by the Chinese Foundation for Hepatitis
Prevention and Control. It aims to teach nearly 340,000 women of
childbearing age and nearly 600 grassroots doctors in pilot
counties how to prevent Hepatitis B.
The fund will cover the cost of free educational pamphlets,
renting venues for lectures and providing medical equipment for
Hepatitis B prevention.
The women will learn that they should be tested for Hepatitis B
before they are married or become pregnant, that their new-born
babies should be vaccinated and mothers who are carriers should not
breast-feed their babies.
A survey by the organizer in Zhenyuan and Wushan counties in
Gansu Province shows that only 25.01 percent of childbearing-age
women surveyed know how Hepatitis B is contracted and only 10.71
percent of doctors surveyed know how to block the transmission from
mother to infant.
Hepatitis, as well as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and snail fever, is
the most serious infectious diseases in China.
Currently, China has about 120 million Hepatitis B carriers and
more than 20 million chronic Hepatitis patients who spend more than
100 billion yuan (US$12.5 billion) per year treating the
illness.
Medical research shows that most Hepatitis B carriers in China
were infected with the virus when they were babies, 30 to 40
percent of whom were born with the disease. More than 90 percent of
infant infections can be blocked by timely inoculation.
(Xinhua News Agency September 10, 2006)