Hepatitis awareness is vital education focus
Hepatitis awareness is vital education focus
Inform patients about liver function
Hepatitis awareness is extremely important because the public is unaware of how the disease is transmitted, how it can damage the liver, and the important role the liver plays in good health.
That’s why Hepatitis Foundation International in Cedar Grove, NJ, designated May as Hepatitis Awareness Month.
"Hepatitis Awareness Month is an effort to inform people about the liver, why it is important, what it means to them and how it is damaged, so it motivates them to really take care of it. How can you take care of something if you don’t know where it’s located in your body, what it does, and that it doesn’t complain when it is in trouble?" says Thelma King Thiel, chairwoman and CEO.
When King Thiel educates an audience, she tries to help them visualize how the liver, their internal chemical power plant, is damaged. Everything they eat, breathe, and absorb through their skin has to be refined and detoxified by their liver. When people take drugs, drink alcohol, or breathe environmental pollutants, they kill liver cells, which are the employees in their power plant. If they continue to assault the liver and kill off the liver cells — or the "employees" in the plant — at some point, there will be too few employees to do the job but they won’t know it because the liver is a noncomplaining organ. It can shut down quickly if it doesn’t have enough healthy cells doing the job.
The hepatitis virus causes inflammation of the liver, which can damage it. The three most common forms in the United States, according to the Hepatitis Foundation, are A, B, and C. Hepatitis A is transmitted through food contaminated with fecal matter, water, and anal or oral contact. It usually does not lead to liver damage. Hepatitis B and C do attack the liver and are transmitted via infected blood and body fluids.
In 80% of the hepatitis C cases, the patient develops chronic hepatitis, which can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Hepatitis B is frequently transmitted through sexual intercourse and is 100 times more infectious than HIV-AIDS. It can cause severe damage to the liver and even death.
"With Hepatitis Awareness Month, we are trying to straighten out some of the misconceptions and alert people as to how to protect themselves. People can be vaccinated for hepatitis A and B, but there is no vaccine for hepatitis C," says King Thiel. She encourages health care facilities to host brown-bag lunches for adults and take the message to schoolchildren.
To aid in educational efforts, the foundation has created several educational videos and pamphlets. One aimed at teens is called Respect Yourself-Protect Yourself: Teens Talk to Teens about Liver Wellness. It is available in English, Spanish, Mandarin, and Vietnamese. "We have a special version for the African-American community that we worked with them on," says King Thiel. ("See Hepatitis Foundation educational products," in this issue.)
Hepatitis education is vital because people do not know how to protect themselves from the disease or how to take responsibility for their own health care, says King Thiel.
Source
For more information about Hepatitis Awareness Month, or to obtain materials for educational purposes, contact:
- Thelma King Thiel, Chairwoman and CEO, Hepatitis Foundation International, 30 Sunrise Terrace, Cedar Grove, NJ 07009. Telephone: (800) 891-0707 or (973) 239-1035. Fax: (973) 857-5044. Web: www.hepfi.org.
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