Going beyond China and India, Pakistan has now become the country with the highest number of hepatitis C patients, while one out of every ten people is suffering from some form of hepatitis.
Doctors and public health experts have strongly said that PCR test should be promoted in this context so that hepatitis C can be identified in time. However, it has been determined that Pakistan has the largest hepatitis C population, which has become a medical burden. In this way, the incidence of liver cancer has also increased in the country.
Although the government had launched a campaign to eradicate the disease with great vigor, under which the country had to eradicate all forms of hepatitis by 2030 and rid the people of this disease. Despite this, the incidence of the disease is on the rise and around one crore people in the country are suffering from hepatitis C and need to be diagnosed and treated.
In 2020, there were 461,000 new cases of hepatitis C, the highest number of new cases of any country in the world.
Dr. Homi Razavi, associated with the Center for Disease Analysis (CDA) in America, presented these statistics at the meeting of the Pakistan Society for Liver Diseases held in Karachi. Dr. Razavi oversees the editing and maintenance of the world’s largest viral hepatitis database, the Polaris Observatory.
