China’s campaign against hepatitis B has proven to be quite successful. According to a health official, the reported cases of the disease in the country has decreased due to the vaccination-based strategy employed to control the virus.
Despite the good news, Wang Guoqiang, the deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, said that the prevention and control of hepatitis in the country still faces many hurdles.
There are currently 90 million Chinese people infected with the hepatitis B virus (HBV), according to data collected by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Numbers of reported incidences of the disease in the country have steadily dwindled in the past couple of years.
Statistics collected last year also show that the prevalence of the hepatitis B surface antigen among Chinese children in the 1-4 and 5-14 age groups has also dropped by over 60 percent from 2006 to 0.32 and 0.94 percent, respectively.
Reported incidences of hepatitis A in China also hit a record low in 2014.
Hepatitis E, however, is on the rise as its morbidity has increased in the recent years, said the official.
For Wang, focusing on innovation and utilizing traditional Chinese medicine to prevent infection can significantly help China's war against the disease. The country's vaccination-based strategy has already proven to be very helpful, as it enabled China to reduce HBV prevalence among children ahead of the 2017 deadline imposed by the World Health Organization (WHO).
The strengthened monitoring of hepatitis B throughout the country, along with a new way of testing blood in collection stations, also helps in China's nationwide campaign to prevent as well as limit HBV spread in the country.