PATHANAMTHITTA: District Collector P C Sanalkumar said on Wednesday that a task force was set up to check the spread of Hepatitis A in the district.

Addressing a meeting to discuss measures to control the spread of Hepatitis A, the Collector said that as part of the programme, water sources would be chlorinated. To ensure the successful implementation of the preventive measures, the assistance of health workers, voluntary agencies, Literacy Mission and Kudumbasree Mission would be utilised.

Frustrated over the failure of the Rs 2.5 billion National Programme for the Control and Prevention of Hepatitis (NPCPH) to deliver the goods in the last three years, the Health Ministry bosses and experts are now busy re-designing the current strategy to fight the viral disease whose sufferers are around 15 million in Pakistan.

In August 2005, the ministry had launched the five-year NPCPH to contain growing cases of hepatitis, especially hepatitis C, in the country and provide patients with inexpensive treatment.

The health ministry has reworked its failed

District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil has said that hepatitis-B and C are posing a great challenge to the world, including Pakistan, and the issue needs to be tackled on war footing.

He was speaking at the inaugural ceremony of a free medical camp set-up at Behram village by Ehasas Welfare Trust here on Sunday.

He said used syringes and blades were the root-causes of transfer of hepatitis from one person to another and advised patients to purchase new syringes before going to doctors for injection.

The Ministry of Health has instructed all the provinces to concentrate on the prevention of hepatitis in accordance with the PC-1 of Prime Minister's Hepatitis Control Programme. The federal government also slashed the quantity of the hepatitis vaccines to the provinces, sources said.

TEZPUR

At least 20 million Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), 2.0 million Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and 0.26 million HIV new infections are associated with unsafe use of injections every year across the world, experts quoting a WHO report said yesterday. They also warned that South East Asia is a red zone of unsafe use of injections, saying that half of the total use of injections in the world is unsafe. Experts said this yesterday at a seminar on 'Injection use and risk of HBV, HCV and HIV infection: Intervention for risk reduction' at the British Council auditorium in the city.

MUSHALPUR

More than 2.2 million people in the NWFP and Fata have been infected with hepatitis B and C. This was revealed at an awareness seminar held here on Monday to mark the World Hepatitis Day. Dr Ihsanullah Turabi, provincial coordinator of the hepatitis control programme, while speaking on the occasion urged preventive measures against the deadly disease, saying that more than 700,000 people in NWFP and 124,000 in Fata suffered from hepatitis B. "In Frontier, an estimated 1.1778 million people while in Fata about 0.19 million had hepatitis C,' he added.

Around 2.5 lakh people get infected with hepatitis viruses a year in the country, experts at a discussion said yesterday. Hepatitis, a serious disease which affects the liver, is 100 times more infectious than HIV, they said. Liver Foundation of Bangladesh organised the discussion at the National Museum auditorium in the city to mark the World Hepatitis Day.