World Hepatitis Day
Next: July 28, 2027
Know your liver. Get tested.
The story
Where it comes from
The World Health Assembly made 28 July World Hepatitis Day in May 2010, in a resolution asking countries to step up prevention, testing, vaccination and treatment. The date is the birthday of Baruch Blumberg, the American scientist who discovered the hepatitis B virus in 1967, developed a test for it and, two years later, the first hepatitis B vaccine. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1976. Viral hepatitis inflames the liver, often silently, for years.
How it's celebrated
The World Health Organization, health ministries, doctors and patient groups use the day for campaigns on prevention, vaccination, testing and treatment, and WHO supports poorer countries in holding their own events. The most useful thing anyone can do is simple: ask a doctor whether you have been tested or vaccinated, and encourage someone you love to do the same.
Did you know
- Viral hepatitis affects more than 300 million people worldwide and causes more than a million deaths a year.
- In July 1984 Taiwan began the world's first universal hepatitis B vaccination programme for babies, and within ten years the share of children carrying the virus fell from about 10% to under 1%.
- WHO has set countries the goal of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030, and says low testing and treatment rates are the biggest gap.
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