Improving communication about viral hepatitis in Africa.

Abstract : As a result of the high disease burden and advent of effective preventive and therapeutic measures for viral hepatitis, the UN has included its control in its Sustainable Development Goals, and the WHO has developed a viral hepatitis elimination strategy. Only with a genuine understanding of viral hepatitis can people living with these infections fully commit to a treatment program. New WHO guidelines on HBV/HCV testing published in Februay 2017, however, make little mention of communicating with populations about chronic viral hepatitis. Our recent anthropological research investigating local understandings of hepatitis B in five sub-Saharan African countries (The Gambia, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic and Madagascar) underscore the communication challenges that treatment programmes must tackle: a lack of knowledge about hepatitis B; complex local terms describing visible symptoms of liver disease; and the inappropriate use of other pathologies to explain hepatitis B.