Hepatitis B carriers’ lives suck
A comment from mdmhvonpa drew my attention to this topic: Hepatitis B in China. The flood of information first began with lifeinjiangxi, which then spread to Asian Labour News (1, 2 & 3), and then to The Peking Duck.
I don’t personally know any Hep B carriers in China, but I do have relatives back home who have tested positive, and two who have since passed away from liver cancer. I can’t even imagine how impossible life must be for someone in China who is a carrier. People get pigeonholed and stigmatised for all sorts of stupid reasons, but this is really something. It seems to be part of the ‘ignore the sufferers, they’ll die, and the problem will go away’ sort of attitude that causes so epidemics. Remember SARS?
In china
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For what it’s worth, people who contract HepB tend to get “acute” disease rather than the chronic form (which leads to liver cancer, cirrhosis, etc.). People with HepC tend to develop the lingering, chronic form that goes on for years and years and years….
So people with HepB tend to go out quickly and with a bang. Yay.
I presume the government is banking on that!
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