A Journey of Discovery in Hepatitis B and C

About My Journey

My name is Raquel and over the next 12 months I will be travelling around the world on behalf of the World Hepatitis Alliance. As part of my tour, I will be meeting with patients, medical associations, patient groups and politicians to gain a better understanding of how countries are tackling hepatitis B and C and to share best practice from other countries...

Who am I? Well, 3½ years ago I knocked on a charity's door in London to ask if I could interview some people for my masters thesis on hepatitis. Since then I have turned a personal interest into my daily working life and have never left the hepatitis field. I have always been passionate about hepatitis – I lost someone I loved dearly to hepatitis C when I was 15 and have seen many other people needlessly suffer from hepatitis C and B through my charity work in this field.

Knowing that treatments for hepatitis C can be very effective if patients are diagnosed early and that there is a vaccine to prevent hepatitis B motivates me to continue raising awareness of these diseases which collectively affect 500 million people in the world and take 1.5 million lives a year.

I hope my journey helps bring change for the hepatitis community and that people benefit from it as a consequence. Welcome to my blog: keep up to date with my journey here!

Where will I be visiting?

On behalf of the World Hepatitis Alliance, I will be visiting the following countries to learn about how governments, patient advocacy groups and the medical community are tackling chronic hepatitis B and C:

  • Argentina
  • Australia
  • Bangladesh
  • Brazil
  • China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan)
  • Ghana
  • Poland
  • New Zealand
  • Scotland
  • USA
  • Vietnam

Blogging Together

Blogging together is an opportunity for bloggers, vloggers, and photo-bloggers to support the 'Am I Number 12?' campaign. Add a badge and show your support for the 500 million people living with hepatitis B and C today.

Alternatively if you want to make your own badge, send it to us and we will include it in our gallery of badges: worldhepday@fleishman.com

Join me and support worldhepatitisday.org

News from Ghana - part 2

09/ 2/09 by: Raquel Jose

So where was I?  Oh yes, Ghana! As I mentioned in my last post, I recently returned from Ghana where Achim and I were visiting doctors, politicians, foundations, patients and celebrities to talk about hepatitis B in their region.

In a country where one in 10 people are estimated to have hepatitis B (!), it is shocking to find out that there is little awareness about the disease and that unfortunately there are no health programmes that I know of.

Funding seems to be a big problem. From the very start we were told that there was no money in the pot to support a national hepatitis B programme. So, despite being hugely endemic, hepatitis B is not part of Ghana's Health Insurance which means that people need to pay for everything; diagnostic tests, vaccination, viral load tests and treatment. Typically they cannot afford any of these costs. It is certainly a very challenging situation...

But not all is doom and gloom - the good news is that there are many passionate people who are really trying to make a difference and push for change. The Theobald Hepatitis B Foundation and the Hepi Pearl Foundation (led by Miss Ghana), which started last year, are promoting hepatitis B education and lobbying the government to move hepatitis higher on the healthcare agenda. We also met enthusiastic doctors who are doing what they can to help with the resources they have available.

I really enjoyed the experience and am very grateful to everyone I met for taking the time to speak with me. 

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