China has set up two clinics for young hepatitis B patients that
provide better and more personal treatment schemes that fit their
age.
"The aim of the clinics is to make sure every young hepatitis B
patient will get the right anti-viral treatment," said Wang
Menglan, deputy director of the domestic culture study association
under the All China Women's Federation.
The two clinics, set up at the No. 302 Hospital of the Chinese
People's Liberation Army and Beijing-based People's University by
the association and the China Hepatitis Prevention Foundation, will
receive patients by appointment.
Doctor Wei Lai, from a hospital of Beijing University, said that
student patients were often overlooked due to the heavy school work
and parents’ ignorance of the disease.
Last month, 19 students who tested positive for hepatitis B in
the city of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, were advised to leave
school, for fear that they could spread the virus.
Hepatitis B is spread by contact with infected blood or through
sex. It can survive only briefly outside the human body.
Hepatitis B affects more than 120 million Chinese and is
considered a major threat to public health, according to the
Ministry of Health.
Teenage patients are at the right age to receive anti-viral
treatment because their immune systems are starting to recognize
and fight the virus, said Zhang Hongfei, chief doctor at the
infectious disease department at the PLA No. 302 Hospital.
The two clinics will catalog and analyze the hepatitis B and C
viruses to provide references for pediatric hepatitis B vaccines in
the future.
(Xinhua News Agency November 10, 2006)
