Hepatitis groups, patients and advocates worldwide take part in events on 28 July. Notably in 2012, a Guinness World Record was created when 12,588 people from 20 countries did the Three Wise Monkeys actions on World Hepatitis Day to signify the willful ignorance of the disease.
History
The inaugural International Hepatitis CAwareness day, coordinated by various European and Middle Eastern Patient Groups and Baby Muriel, took place on October 1, 2004, However many patient groups continued to mark 'hepatitis day' on disparate dates. For this reason in 2008, the World Hepatitis Alliance in collaboration with patient groups declared May 19 the first global World Hepatitis Day. The idea of Hepatitis day originated in Cuttack,Odisha. As mentioned by Blumberg himself in his autobiography,Professor SP Singh, Head of the dept of Gastroenterology,SCB Cuttack proposed to celebrate Hepatitis day in the institute on 28th of July. Following the adoption of a resolution during the 63rd World Health Assembly in May 2010, World Hepatitis Day was given global endorsement as the primary focus for national and international awareness-raising efforts and the date was changed to July 28. The resolution resolves that "28 July shall be designated as World Hepatitis Day in order to provide an opportunity for education and greater understanding of viral hepatitis as a global public health problem, and to stimulate the strengthening of preventive and control measures of this disease in Member States." World Hepatitis Day is now recognised in over 100 countries each year through events such as free screenings, poster campaigns, demonstrations, concerts, talk shows, flash mobs and vaccination drives, amongst many others. Each year a report is published by the WHO and the World Hepatitis Alliance detailing all the events across the world.
Themes
World Hepatitis Day provides an opportunity to focus on actions such as:
Raising awareness of the different forms of hepatitis and how they are transmitted;
Strengthening prevention, screening and control of viral hepatitis and its related diseases;
Increasing hepatitis B vaccine coverage and integration into national immunization programmes; and
Coordinating a global response to hepatitis.
Each year focuses on a specific theme. The list of themes is as follows:
2011: Hepatitis affects everyone, everywhere. Know it. Confront it. Confront her.
2012: It’s closer than you think.
2013: More must be done to stop this silent killer.
