Tamil Nadu

Drive against Hepatitis-B

Tuticorin: The Directorate of Public Health and Preventive Medicine launched a special campaign under the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) to reduce morbidity due to Hepatitis-B in the district, starting Wednesday.

S. Uma, Deputy Director of Health, said that hepatitis-B also called as serum hepatitis, could cause cirrhosis and malignancy of liver, both of which could lead to death, and hence the spread of disease needed to be controlled in the community.

As part of the drive, the department would administer preventive vaccine free to children aged less than one year, at all government-run hospitals situated across the district.

The vaccines have been stored at these medical institutions inside ‘ice-lined refrigerators’.

Dr. Uma said that children should be administered the first dose of vaccine 72 hours after birth, second dose at one-and-a-half months after birth and third when they were three-and-a-half months old, to attain immunity to the disease.

The Deputy Director said that the Hepatitis-B virus spreads through contaminated blood transfusion, infected body fluids like blood, semen, urine and saliva, injection of drugs with contaminated syringes and transmission from hepatitis-B infected mother to new born babies.

The department plans to use the campaign to advise the children with malaise, fever, muscle aches, jaundice, vomiting, nausea and diarrhea, to consult the nearest primary health centre at the earliest, to rule out hepatitis-B infection.

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