Third of global hepatitis B cases Chinese

Nearly one third of the world's 350 million hepatitis B carriers are Chinese, said the National Health and Family Planning Commission before World Hepatitis Day Sunday, putting the number at 100 million.

The commission also said half of 700,000 deaths caused by viral hepatitis every year globally are Chinese.

According to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 100,000 Chinese people are infected every year.

Vaccination has proven to be the most effective way to prevent the virus.

The World Health Organization said Sunday in a report that through vaccination, China has reduced the chronic infection rate in children aged below 5 from 10 percent to less than 1 percent.

China started to vaccinate children since 1992 and has offered free vaccination to newborns since 2005. Some 68 million children below 15 had been vaccinated by 2011.

The rate of hepatitis B surface antigen carrier for kids under 15 was slashed to 0.97 percent in 2006 from 9.7 percent in 1992 when the vaccination started, said Yang Weizhong, a deputy director of China CDC.

Despite the efforts, the number of hepatitis B carriers will remain huge for three to four generations, Zheng Yingjie, associate professor at the Shanghai-based Fudan University School of Public Health, told the Global Times.

Zheng, an expert on prevention of hepatitis B, said maternal-neonatal transmission is the main cause.

"If a baby is infected, the condition can only be controlled but not cured. That's why the infection rate in age groups above 20 will not see an immediate decline," said Zheng.

Hepatitis B carriers and patients in China have suffered discrimination at different stages of life, especially employment, though laws and regulations have been amended in recent years to ban employment discrimination against those carriers.

"This was partly caused by improper policies in the past and the government has realized it," Zheng said. "Discrimination also comes from ignorance of the disease, so public health education is very essential. Three to four people out of 50 might be hepatitis B carriers; they can be friends or family."