Last week, information from the Canadian Measures Health Survey discovered that thousands of Canadian are infected with hepatitis B or C and were unaware of it.
Dr Morris Sherman is the Chairman of the Canadian Liver Foundation and an associate professor of medicine at the University of Toronto.
ListenStatistics Canada says that seventy per cent of the about 138,600 Canadians infected with hepatitis C based on blood tests did not know they had the virus, Statistics Canada says.
The problem is that there really are no evident symptoms to let people know they have a problem until the damage to the liver becomes significant. Both viruses cause cirrhosis and can result in cancer and liver failure, and potentially death.
“Accurate infection awareness is important for health-care seeking, receipt of treatment, vaccination uptake, and disease prevention, but more than half of respondents who tested positive for hepatitis B and hepatitis C did not know that they were infected,” Michelle Rotermann of the agency’s health analysis division and her co-authors concluded.
Generally, 75 per cent to 80 per cent of people with hepatitis C develop chronic HCV infections, the authors say.
The virus can be transmitted through blood, blood products, organs, tissues and cell transplants, infected needles such as by illegal drug use and Canada, and improperly cleaned needles and surgical instruments in some foreign countries.
The virus can also be spread from mother to infant during pregnancy. Sexual transmission is less common although there is a greater risk of Hep B being transmitted according to Dr Sherman
In the early to mid-1990s, Canada rolled out universal hepatitis B vaccination programs for infants and school-aged children.
Dr Sherman says because of the long timeline, the “baby-boomers” who contracted the virus in their younger days, are now starting to show liver damage from the disease.
He says a simple blood test can detect hepatitis and that Hep-B can easily be suppressed with treatment, and Hep-C treatment should be easily treatable within 3-5 years. In the meantime the Canadian Liver Foundation urges all people to get tested.
Dr Sherman says, the earlier the disease is detected, the better the treatment results.
The study results are based on two surveys involving over 8,400 people. Cycle 1 took place from March 2007 through February 2009, and collected information from respondents aged 6 to 79 living in private households in 15 locations across Canada. Cycle 2 took place from August 2009 through November 2011, and collected data from respondents aged 3 to 79 living in private households in 18 locations.
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