Dr Mohd Ismail Merican the Director-General of Health Datuk, Kuala Lumpur asked the people to seek medical help in case if they are infected with Hepatitis C.
Dr Mohd Ismail Merican the Director-General of Health Datuk, Kuala Lumpur asked the people to seek medical help in case if they are infected with Hepatitis C.
He said that people who had received blood transfusion before 1997 to go in for a blood check up to screen against the deadly virus Hepatitis C. This because the routine blood screening procedure was initiate after 1997 and erase all doubts that people who had undergone transfusion before that might be infected with the disease.He said this at the health seminar on Hepatitis C that there was an increase in the number of patients from 33 in 1996 to 745 in 2004.
This increase was detected after the blood screening tests were done on the foreign workers and drug addicts.
But he said that the good news is the availability of treatment option in the form of pegylated interferon combination therapy. The anti-viral drug ribavirion is very effective in the treatment of the Hepatitis C.
He also said that prevention is better than cure and asked the people to indulge in various preventive methods such as avoiding unscreened blood transfusions and unsafe injections. He encouraged people suffering from unusual tiredness to go in for a Hepatitis C check up.
He said that the number of Hepatitis A and B cases have come down due to the proper food and personal hygiene followed by the people.
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