The Chief Medical Director (CMD) of College School Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, Professor Jesse Otegbayo, has disclosed that over 20 million Nigerians live with Hepatitis B and C, including that 80% of those that have the illness don’t kn
Otegbayo who disclosed this whereas delivering the 548th inaugural lecture of College of Ibadan (UI), held at Trenchard Corridor of the establishment, titled, “The human workhorse and microbial afflictions: Hepatitis B, its deadly sting, and the tragic trajectory,” mentioned the liver most cancers attributable to Hepatitis B may be very lethal.
Otegbayo famous that the liver was the workhorse or powerhouse of the physique as a result of it performs essential roles in carbohydrate, fats, protein, nutritional vitamins, and minerals metabolism, together with drug detoxing of ammonia into urea, regulation of blood clotting, immunity, and plenty of others, stressing that it’s identified to carry out over 5 hundred features within the physique.
“Hepatitis B virus is a viral an infection. It’s an organism that may’t be seen with bare eyes and it has an impact on the center, in that it could trigger irritation and it could trigger what is named liver cirrhosis and liver most cancers.
“The sort of liver most cancers that it causes may be very lethal. Most of our sufferers that we see with that most cancers normally die inside six weeks and three months after the analysis as a result of they current late.
“The transmissible type of HBV is present in all physique fluids, akin to blood, semen, saliva, sweat, urine, and bile, amongst others. The simplest technique of transmission, nevertheless, is blood and blood merchandise.
“Different channels are sexual contacts, saliva, and organ transplantation. As a result of the organism is very infectious, solely a small amount of fluid is required to transmit the an infection, and actually, HBV is a couple of hundred occasions as infectious because the dreaded HIV virus and will survive for so long as six weeks on a dry floor. It could possibly additionally resist a temperature of boiling water for one hour and nonetheless retain its infectivity.
“Usually, transmission of HBV may very well be vertical or horizontal. Vertical transmission is from mom to baby, whereas horizontal transmission is from individual to individual.
“In Africa, HBV is considerably transmitted horizontally throughout childhood due to contact with exudates from open sores and make contact with sports activities. In Ibadan, amongst blood donors on the College School Hospital, the most typical danger elements, and the supply of an infection by means of bloodletting had been scarification and indiscriminate injections.”
