Thursday, March 29, 2012

Blog #10: Hepatitis E Infected More Than 20 Million Worldwide Annually


According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Hepatitis E is a general term meaning inflammation of the liver and it can be caused by a variety of different viruses. Hepatitis E (HEV) is caused by an infection, a non-enveloped, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus; it is transmitted via the fecal-oral route. According a study published in the April issue of Hepatology, it is estimated that 20.1 million people in 9 regions of Africa and Asia are infected with this virus. The large outbreaks are common in developing countries with contaminated water. The pattern of HEV infection was consistent across the regions, with the largest incident increase among young aged people from 5-20 years, this has also led to a 8.1% of deaths among the same age group.
There have been studies showing that the study with the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago, that to be able to work on the task at hand is to first attempt to estimate the annual global impact of the virus. I believe that this particular approach would be good, this will be a better way to be able to distribute a vaccine—it is known that the vaccine does in fact exist, just hasn’t been implemented a good as it should. Possibly, the vaccine should be a requirement for when babies are first born since it is known that they are at the highest risk. But it shouldn’t just stop at supplying the vaccine, there must be a way to get the people more involved to make sure that this virus doesn’t come back; a way to do this is helping with a system that provides cleaner water, educating the community on how to not use the same water that is used to clean their bodies with or not use as a bathroom source; by also finding the mode of transmission would be key in making sure the epidemic is under control.

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