Hepatitis C Essay

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Hepatitis C: Brief Overview and Statistics

1. The nature of the problem

Hepatitis C refers to an infectious disease of the liver: it can manifest as either mild or severe and lasting in term for a few weeks or for as long as the infected individual might live (cdc.gov, 2018). It develops within the individual as a result of a contamination via the Hepatitis C virus, spread mainly via blood-to-blood contact (cdc.gov, 2018). This disease can be either acute or chronic, though acute infections often develop into chronic ones; around 75-85% of acute cases eventually develop into chronic cases (cdc.gov, 2018). This disease can cause long term liver damage that sometimes lasts a lifetime and leads to even more serious conditions such as scarring of the liver or cancer of the liver (cdc.gov, 2018).

By referring to Hepatitis C as a blood-to-blood illness, this refers to the way in which the virus is spread: someone whose blood is already infected with Hepatitis C makes contact with uninfected blood. Hence, intravenous drug use is the most common means of transmission. Thus, if someone has a Hepatitis C infection, it would be reasonable to infer that they have a drug problem that involves narcotics consumed via syringe. Before 1992, it was possible to become infected with Hepatitis C via blood transfusion: however, nowadays that really isn’t possible, given how rigorously blood is screened.

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However infrequent, infection can still occur via needle stick injuries in hospitals and clinics, along with being born to a woman who already have the disease (cdc.gov, 2018). Finally, it is possible to contract the disease through sexual contact, or by sharing personal items such as razors or even toothbrushes, however these forms of transmission are exceedingly rare (cdc.gov, 2018). When it comes to contracting the disease via sexual contact, the low rate of risk generally increases with the number of sex partners, if the sex is rough, or if one of the partners has other sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS (cdc.gov, 2018).

2. The prevalence and incidence statistics for the problem in the United States and around the world (no older than 5 years).

“In 2016, a total of 2,967 cases of acute hepatitis C were reported to CDC. Since many people may not have symptoms or don’t know they are infected, their illness is often not diagnosed, reported and therefore counted.  CDC estimates the actual number of acute hepatitis C cases was almost 41,200 in 2016” (cdc.gov, 2018). However, these are just the numbers of new infections in 2016. In total, the number of infected people in America is over 3 million (cdc.gov, 2018). This means that over 3 million….....

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