Lucky Obukohwo Reporting
The Edo Specialist Hospital has begun a four day free screening and vaccination exercise on hepatitis B for residents of the state.
The exercise is being observed to commemorate the 2023 World Hepatitis Week.
Speaking with newsmen in Benin, Dr Esene Samuel, the team lead said the week was being observed to raise awareness about the deadly liver disease.
“We are doing Hepatitis Week and offering free hepatitis B screening for people; the purpose of which is to guide towards hepatitis B, an infection of the liver.
“It is one of the deadly infections; yet earlier detection, full screening and medication, proper evaluation saves a lot of things.
“So for the purpose of this programme, we are doing the screening; we test for hepatitis B and for those that come negative, we do vaccination.
“This facilitation is in three folds. You take one today, one month later, you come over to the clinic to take the second.
“After then, six months later you take the complete doze. If per adventure you miss any of these ones; perhaps you take the first doze and miss the next and last, that means you have to start everything all over,” he said.
Dr Samuel noted, however, that those tested positive would undergo a follow test to know the viral load and the extent of the liver damage.
“For those that are already positive, we also do follow up for them. There are other tests they need to do like the fine panel test, another test to know the extent of the damage it has caused.
“Then we educate them more of lifestyle and the other changes they would have to do for then to have a better health.
“It is for four days. This is not the first time, even though it is the first time that I am participating. I heard they have been doing every year they have the week.
“It is part of their social responsibility to the public for what they do. It has been like a routine thing.
“We take one of the health social problems and they go out and look for ways to make the society a better place,” said the medical personnel.
He regretted that information about the disease was under-reported despite the severity of nature of the infection and critical functions of liver in the body.
He appealed to other hospitals, individuals and governments to help more in creating awareness, screening and vaccination.