Only 12% of Hong Kong people diagnosed with hepatitis C receive treatment.

About half of Hong Kongers with hepatitis C were officially diagnosed and only 12% of them received appropriate treatment. This conclusion is based on estimates from a study involving 11,000 residents of the city. According to the Association for the Study of Liver Disease in Hong Kong, the numbers were lower than the target set, but by the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO plans to reach a diagnosis rate of 90% by 2030, while 80% patients should receive treatment. The study involved 11,309 patients with hepatitis C from 15 public hospitals. The researchers badyzed and collected their data between January 2005 and March of last year. According to government estimates, the prevalence rate of hepatitis C in Hong Kong would be 0.3%, or nearly 22,000 people in the city.

Hepatitis C is a disease that can cause infection and inflammation of the liver. The disease usually develops when a person has been infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), which can be chronic or acute. Hepatitis C has no vaccine, unlike hepatitis A and B, but efforts are underway to create one in the future. This disease is considered highly contagious, which explains the high number of people with hepatitis C.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that about 70 to 80% people with hepatitis C had none. Some patients have mild to severe symptoms, such as jaundice, joint pain, abdominal pain or discomfort, loss of appetite, dark urine, and fever.

Professor Grace Wong Lai-hung, who is one of the authors of the study and a member of the board of directors of the badociation, pointed out that the main problem of the Prevalence of the virus was the ignorance of the symptoms. She said that in Hong Kong, hepatitis C was not an important chronic liver disease, but that the symptoms were not so obvious.

According to the South China Morning Post, patients have rarely sought treatment for hepatitis C due to conventional treatments. offered free in the public sector, but its efficiency rate was only about 60 percent.

However, new treatments are 100 percent effective. Wong urged the government to devote more resources to funding treatments for hepatitis C. The badociation hopes the study will be a useful tool for advising the government on prevention and control.