Thread: Immigration responsible for doubling of hepatitis cases

[quote]
New wave of immigration blamed for doubling of hepatitis B cases
Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor

Soaring rates of infection by hepatitis B, fuelled by large-scale immigration, pose a serious health threat that is not being addressed properly, a report has said.

The Hepatitis B Foundation estimates that the numbers infected by the disease in Britain have almost doubled in the past five years, to 326,000. More than half of these people are immigrants from Africa, Asia, Russia and the new EU nations.

Hepatitis B has few symptoms. If untreated it can lead to serious liver disease including liver cancer, and death, decades after infection. World-wide, 500,000 to 700,000 people die every year as a result of infection by the virus.

Britain, unlike 85 per cent of countries, does not have the universal vaccination against hepatitis B that is recommended by the World Health Organisation. Instead, the policy is to vaccinate selectively, attempting to prevent the spread of the disease from mothers to children, for example.

The report cautions that growing levels of undetected infections are a health time bomb that needs to be defused urgently. It calls on the Government to develop a strategy for dealing with the problem.

“Much more needs to be done,â€

This should fall under the listing "The rise and fall of the British Empire"