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