Close to 60,000 children of northwest China's Qinghai Province
will benefit from of a program launched with the purpose of
preventing spread of hepatitis B in the province.
The program run by the Chinese Foundation for Hepatitis
Prevention and Control (CFHPC) and the Asian Liver Center of
Stanford University of the US jointly provides free vaccines for
children from 331 kindergartens, primary and high schools in the
Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.
All the children will be inoculated against hepatitis B from
this month to May next year at a cost of more than two million yuan
(US$250,000), according to the Qinghai Provincial Department of
Health.
The Asian Liver Center at Stanford University is a non-profit
center established to address the high incidence of hepatitis B in
Asians and Asian-Americans.
The Qinghai program would also raise awareness of hepatitis B
prevention among children, said Li Yanming, head of disease control
center under the provincial department of health. Li refused to
disclose the number of carriers in the province.
Li said Qinghai had made marked progress in vaccination among
children, especially among infants since the vaccination was put on
the list of planned immunity by the government in 2002. Currently,
85 percent of infants in Qinghai are inoculated.
Nationwide, 75 percent of babies were inoculated in 2004,
compared with 60 percent before 2002, according to Ministry of
Health figures.
However, the number of children inoculated in Qinghai Province
varies according to location. Some children in remote and
poverty-stricken rural areas cannot be vaccinated in a timely way,
Li said.
The CFHPC and the Asian Liver Center jointly launched the
program to help local children get timely inoculations and reduce
the incidence of hepatitis B among children.
The program will also train local medical staff in prevention
and treatment.
The Qinghai program is one of a series jointly launched by the
CFHPC and the Chinese Ministry of Health targeting hepatitis B this
year.
Other programs include a two-year project to improve awareness
of hepatitis B prevention among rural women and to help train
medical practitioners in treatment in rural areas.
Pilots projects were launched in Zhenyuan and Wushan counties of
northwest China's Gansu Province on Saturday. The pilot projects
will cover approximately 600 grassroots medical workers and 340,000
rural women of child-bearing age.
China has seen high incidence of hepatitis B, with the number of
carriers estimated at 120 million out of a population of 1.3
billion.
According to the Ministry of Health, China has about 20 million
chronic hepatitis B patients. The country reports 280,000 deaths
from hepatocirrhosis and liver cancer relating to hepatitis B virus
infection each year. Hepatitis B has been one of the top killer
infectious diseases in the country for many years.
The Ministry of Health has drafted regulations on prevention and
treatment, aiming to reduce the number of people who test positive
for the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), the incidence of cases
and deaths from hepatocirrhosis and liver cancer.
China reported 982,297 hepatitis B cases last year.
(Xinhua News Agency September 12, 2006)
