DR Christopher Kong San Choon | What is Hepatitis B
Q: What is Hepatitis B
Hepatitis B is a virus infection. The virus infects the body
and mainly attacks the liver.
There’s the initial phase where is the acute phase.
And this may result in the patient clearing most of the virus
from the body. Or the virus may become more quiescent and the
patient becomes a chronic Hepatitis B carrier.
When they become a Hepatitis B carrier, they enter what we call a latent phase
where it slowly causes problem in the body as long as the patient is well.
Now, Hepatitis B is quite common in the world. It’s estimated that about 2 billion have had previous
infection or having infection at this moment in time.
From the World Health Organisation data in 2015, it’s just that there
are about over 200million people who are chronic carriers of Hepatitis B.
In fact, the data suggest that in that year alone, over 800thousand people,
has had serious complications or passed away from Hepatitis B related disease.
