Contending With Hepatitis B Infection

by Elizabeth Campbell

Hepatitis B is a highly communicable disease caused by the hepatitis B virus belonging to a family of DNA viruses, which have made the human body their natural host. However, this virus is highly adaptable to the conditions outside the body that it can survive for a long time on non-living things such as medical equipment, many months after the exposure. This is one of the ways this virus can be transferred.

Hepatitis B virus is at least one hundred times less infectious than HIV and it presents itself with more viral particles in the infected blood. As opposed to the HIV, this virus can be transmitted through saliva also. This is a verified aspect of the matter; it has already been proven.

Hepatitis B is much easier to contract than the HIV because it can be transmitted not only through direct sexual contact, but also from other factors such as close contact with family members living under a very crowded situation. Additionally, it can also be contracted through biological liquids like seminal liquid, vaginal secretions, blood, and saliva.

There are four transmission mechanisms of this nasty infection. First, one is called vertical, when the mother passes the virus to the newborn. The second one is called horizontal and it happens between children, teenagers and young people or even adults. This usually happens through saliva or contaminated blood, which goes into the organism through superficial wounds and scratches. Parents, grandparents, older brothers, which are infected, they are all a potential horizontal source of infection.

Logically, sexual transmission happens when a couple (whether homosexual or normal) engages in a sexual act and one of the partners is infected. Parents can transfer the disease to their children through contaminated blood and blood products which can be transferred to a healthy individual through syringe needles, blood transfusion, dialysis and IV administered medications.

Globally, doctors and medical staff working in hospitals that are directly in contact with infected patients also run the risk of being infected. A lot of other workers are exposed to infections due to the nature of their jobs are the police, the paramedics, firemen and military workers.

More than 3 million people all over the world are infected with the disease and are therefore carriers of the Hepatitis B virus. We should always be careful of all the things we use and people we meet, despite being in low-risk professions unlike those mentioned above. Objects that have been contaminated, such as needles, utensils that have been used by infected persons can be very hazardous and is another way of spreading the disease to healthy individuals. Educating the youth about the cause and how the disease could affect them could be a good deterrent in the spread of the disease.

Educating especially teenagers, which usually do not acknowledge and almost never comply, and not only them, but also all kinds of humans from all the fields of activity, will reduce the transmission of this disease all over the world.

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