Hospital and police officials said that residents of Prem Nagar here complained of drowsiness and fell unconscious after drinking tap water on Thursday. Some of them began vomiting.

Six people died within hours of treatment while about 500 were still being treated.

‘In some places, the water and sewer pipelines are broken and the water from them has got mixed,’ said Ghaziabad District Magistrate SBS Ranga Rao.

‘Not only Loni, entire Ghaziabad is sitting on a death-bed. Hard metals from industrial units have contaminated the entire water table, rendering ground water unfit for domestic use,’ said Akash Vashishtha, an anti-pollution activist of Hindustan Environment Action Group.

 Source: IANS

In one of the widest single-centre studies conducted by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) here, it was found that water-borne Hepatitis E was the basic cause of acute liver failure in nearly 60 percent of pregnant women. Hepatitis E, a preventable disease, is transmitted mainly through contaminated drinking water and can lead to death by triggering acute liver failure. Post failure, the liver is not able to remove toxic substances in the blood. The two-decade study closely examined over 1,000 consecutive patients admitted at AIIMS from Jan 1986 to Dec 2006. It compared the progression of Hepatitis E in pregnant women, non-pregnant women and men in the age group 15-45 years.

“We found that Hepatitis E was the causative agent of acute liver failure in among 60 percent of pregnant women and girls. However, the virus caused acute liver failure in only 30 percent non-pregnant females,” S.K. Acharya, head of department of a gastroenterology at AIIMS, told IANS. ”Among men, only 23 percent were affected by liver failure caused by Hepatitis E,” said Acharya, who is also the co-author of the study. Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver, most commonly caused by a viral infection. In the study, 249 pregnant women were compared with 341 non-pregnant females and 425 males.

“Pregnant women may be more vulnerable to infection by Hepatitis E virus. The mortality rate among hepatic pregnant women was found to be over 50 percent,” the study noted. The study puts pregnant women at an increased vulnerability to Hepatitis E, leaving them with more cautions to follow on hygiene, safe drinking water and sanitation.

“There is a general liver insufficiency or weakness during pregnancy. So, Hepatitis E virus has a higher attack rate and progression in pregnant women,” Acharya explained. There are five main Hepatitis viruses – types A, B, C, D and E. Other than viral infection, Hepatitis is also caused by alcohol, drugs, chemicals, fatty liver and autoimmune disease.

According to World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates, nearly 5 million people will loose life due to viral Hepatitis over the next decade in southeast Asia. The UN health agency says that Indian subcontinent, China and other countries in southeast Asia bear the highest burden of acute liver failure. The study bears out the WHO statistics, adding: “Although pregnancy does not grant increased susceptibility to Hepatitis A, B, and C viruses. Pregnant women may be more vulnerable to infection by Hepatitis E virus.”

However, rather than waiting for a vaccine, experts say the preventive measures come handy and help in preventing the disease to a great extent. ”The vaccine for Hepatitis E is still in the pipeline, but the issue is that all causes of Hepatitis E are very much preventable,” said A.S. Puri, professor with department of gastroenterology at G.B. Pant hospital. ”The virus is transmitted through faecal-oral route, contaminated drinking water which all reflect poor sanitation,” Puri told IANS. According to WHO, China has produced and licensed the first vaccine to prevent Hepatitis E. The vaccine is yet to be available globally.

Source: IANS

Casual one-night stands and multiple partners could be the starting points of serious health concerns. Not just for HIV, which most people are now aware of, but more for hepatitis. Expressing concern over the low awareness among people, especially youngsters, about hepatitis, doctors say that much more needs to be done to spread the word about the disease, like has been done for HIV-AIDS.

“Very often, I have young patients coming to me for a post-exposure test for HIV after unprotected sex, or sex with multiple partners. What they don’t realise is that the probability of contacting the hepatitis B or even C virus through the sexual route is much higher than HIV,” Monica Mahajan, senior consultant at Max Hospital here, told IANS.

The inflammatory disease of the liver affects 100 million with chronic hepatitis B infection in the Southeast Asian region, WHO said. According to doctors, two to five percent of India’s population is affected by hepatitis B.

D. Sreenivasa, consultant at the gastroenterology centre at Fortis Hospital, Bangalore, said that 20 percent of the population is prone to the infection in the future. Mahajan said the hepatitis virus is 50-100 times more contagious than HIV. ”Sexual contact is one of the most common routes for the virus to spread. But it can also spread through other body fluids like blood; so beware of infected needles. Having said that, cases of the virus spreading because of blood contamination has gone down relatively,” Mahajan said.

“Mother-to-child transmission is also mostly taken care of because of all the screening tests that a pregnant women goes through. Plus, now the universal immunisation programme includes protection against hepatitis B, making children less vulnerable. So it’s those in the sexually active age group, in 20s-30s, who are unaware that they are vulnerable,” she added. The infection can cause acute illness with symptoms such as nausea, dark urine, vomiting and abdominal pain.

According to WHO, about 65 percent of those with hepatitis B and 75 percent of those with hepatitis C do not know they are infected. In the case of hepatitis B, sometimes the infection remains asymptomatic for almost two decades, before becoming chronic hepatitis and seriously affecting the liver, sometimes leading to liver cancer.

“Around 60 percent of liver cancer cases in India is because of hepatitis B,” said gastroenterologist Arul Prakash of Chennai’s MOIT Hospitals. The good news, however, is that there is a vaccination for hepatitis B.

“Fortunately, there is a vaccination which can protect one from hepatitis B. Unfortunately, not many people know about it. I often get students applying to foreign universities, coming to get their health certificates, and having no clue that there is a vaccination for hepatitis,” said Satish Koul, internal medicine, Columbia Asia Hospital, Gurgaon. ”Without undermining the risk of HIV, it is pertinent to know that we lose more people to hepatitis B than to the aforementioned, and that the mode of transmission of hepatitis is same as sexually transmitted disease (STD),” Koul told IANS.

To state an example which is worth emulating, Fortis’ Sreenivasa said: “Taiwan had a very high incidence of hepatitis B but after the vaccination against it was introduced, it came down to zero. Now it doesn’t have any new infection cases”. ”Awareness is the only way out and the health sector, hospitals and even the media should take the initiative to do that. Free screening camps can also be organised,” Sreenivasa told IANS.

Source: IANS