The Preventive Medicine and Infection Control Department organized an awareness campaign for Hepatitis Disease under the slogan "Care for your liver, Think about Hepatitis", which lasted for two days in the Outpatient Clinics with the participation of the Saudi Charity Society for Liver Patients (KABIDAK) and the Saudi Center for Organ Transplantation. in addition to Clinical Nutrition Department and Laboratory Medicine at King Abdulaziz Medical City in Jeddah.
Dr. Mansour Al Jundi, Executive Director of Medical Services, Western Region delivered a speech in which he stressed that the World Health Organization celebrates this day in order to increase the community’s level of awareness of hepatitis and its different types : A, B, C, D and E, which affects hundreds of millions of people around the world. He added that these viruses represent a major threat to public health, hepatitis A, B, C can cause acute or chronic infections or inflammation of the liver that can lead to cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer.
Therefore, Dr. Al Jundi pointed out that the World Health Organization issued new recommendations in 2015 on the treatment of hepatitis C, adopted by 194 countries, to improve the prevention of hepatitis, its diagnosis and treatment as part of the global attempts to eradicate this "silent killer ". These recommendations included:
Promote hepatitis and its related diseases prevention and conduct tests for prevention and management.
Raise the level of hepatitis B vaccination coverage of and integrate the vaccine into national immunization programs.
During the campaign, a group of physicians discussed some of the worksheets that specializes in hepatitis awareness, including:
Prevalence of Viral Hepatitis - Dr. Abdulhakeem Al Thaqafi, Associate Executive Director, Infection Prevention & Control Program- WR.
Hepatitis B - Dr. Taha Farah - Consultant Gastroenterologist , Head of the Gastroenterology section.
Hepatitis A - Dr. Majid Shamrani - Deputy AED, IPCD
Hepatitis C - Dr. Dr. Faisal Sanai, Consultant Gastroenterology Hepatology, MD.
Other Types of Viral Hepatitis - Dr. Mohammed Abdalaziz, Staff physician -Public Health.
Viral Hepatitis Infection Control Measures - Dr. Mutasim Mohammed - Public Health - Assistant Consultant.Viral Hepatitis Vaccination - Dr. Fayssal Farahat - Consultant - Public Health, IPCD
Dr. Abdulhakeem Al Thaqafi, Associate Executive Director, Infection Prevention & Control Program- WR, said that the aim of the campaign is to educate the community of hepatitis rates and prevalence, causing factors, infection complications the preventive methods . He added that the seriousness of hepatitis is that many patients may be carrying the virus that causes the disease without having any symptoms which poses a threat of transmission to others. King Abdulaziz Medical City in Jeddah has taken strategic measures to fight viruses that infect the liver, including a comprehensive immunization program, an early detection program for any close contacts of patients with such viruses, in addition to a variety of training programs for prevention and health education campaigns for the public and the patients.