HCV New Drugs

Agartala, Jan 7 : The country's first at-birth hepatitis vaccination was launched in Tripura today at Indira Gandhi Memorial Hospital here by Hepatitis Foundation of Tripura (HFT).

Inaugurating the vaccination programme, Health Minister Tapan Chakraborty said Hepatitis B and C have emerged as more dangerous than HIV/AIDS in a country like India, but a national immunisation programme had yet not started against them.

''The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1992 had recommended all countries to integrate Hepatitis B vaccine in national immunisation programme by the next five years and accordingly, 171 countries of 193 had already launched it but unfortunately, India could not start it,'' Mr Chakraborty said.

He welcomed the HFT initiative of administering free hepatitis B vaccine at birth along with other vaccines in all 37 government hospitals, where institutional delivery was approved and assured to provide all other logistics to the organisation so that cent per cent coverage would be possible by the next couple of years.

He pointed out that Taiwan had launched first universal vaccination against Hepatitis B in 1984 within two years of the vaccine becoming available.

India recorded about 40 per cent Hepatitis virus transmission through perinatal route and risk of at-birth hepatitis B infection was 90 per cent.

''If hepatitis infection occurs during birth, 95 per cent of the newborns get chronic liver disease and only 30 per cent of the younger children can clear the virus and the risk of infection among the infant is 90 per cent, children is 70 per cent and adult is five per cent,'' said HFT president Pradip Bhowmik.

China, having the largest population of the world, introduced at- birth vaccination as early as 1990 and now it recorded success rate at 73.29 per cent and had reduced liver cancer drastically, Dr Bhowmik added.

Tripura had 31 per cent aboriginal population and the prevalence was more than eight per cent, HFT Secretary Dibakar Debnath said, adding unless at-birth vaccination started, the situation would aggravate in near future.

He pointed out that the first dose would be given at birth before discharge from the hospital, second dose after one month and third dose after six month at a subsidised rate.


--UNI
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