Were he still alive, Barry Blumberg would turn 94 on July 28 this year.  Readers may know him as the American physician and biochemist who, in 1976, jointly received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for “discoveries concerning new mechanisms for the origin and dissemination of infectious diseases”. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he served in the US Navy in World War II and thereafter studied medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, New York. Following his graduation in 1951, he completed his residency and then moved to England where, in 1957, he earned his DPhil in biochemistry at Balliol College, Oxford. He would later become the first American to be Master at that college.

Blumberg is mostly noted for his work in identifying hepatitis B. He demonstrated that the virus can cause liver cancer and went on to develop a screening test for the virus thus preventing its spread through blood transfusion. Ultimately, he helped to develop a vaccine, the patent for which he made freely available so that the maximum number of people would benefit. Naturally, the impact of this was significant. Ultimately, in 1992, he co-founded the Hepatitis B Foundation. He was president of the American Philosophical Society from 2005 until his death on April 5, 2011 at the age of 85.

Coincidentally or otherwise, Sunday, July 28 is also World Hepatitis Day.  Originally established by the World Hepatitis Alliance, it is one of just four disease-specific awareness days recognised by the World Health Organization, having been formally endorsed in 2010. This year’s theme is ‘Find the Missing Millions’ as the Alliance reminds us that some 290 million people worldwide live with viral hepatitis without even realising they have the illness. Yet it kills an estimated 1.46 million people annually and is implicated in two out of every three liver cancer deaths.¹ Indeed, deaths annually due to hepatitis outnumber those due to HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Although vaccines cost as little as 20 cents, they are routinely used in fewer than half of countries worldwide.  

While hepatitis A is transmitted through the oro-faecal route (contaminated food and water, and so forth) it is the parenterally-transmitted hepatitis B and C that are of particular concern, given the silent epidemic that exists among the vulnerable and marginalised – intravenous drug users, prisoners, indigenous populations, migrants, homosexual men and people with HIV/AIDS.  

The stated aim of the World Hepatitis Alliance is to “achieve a world free from viral hepatitis” by providing “global leadership in awareness-raising, advocacy and in efforts to find the missing millions”.² The Alliance has 270 member organisations in 91 different countries who share the goal of eliminating viral hepatitis by 2030. Asserting that only 11% of those with viral hepatitis are currently aware of their illness, the Alliance identifies the need for wider diagnosis as the immediate issue and cites the 2016 WHO document Combatting hepatitis B and C to reach elimination by 2030 which calls for an increase in viral B and C diagnosis to 30% and 90% by 2020 and 2030 respectively.¹ Such a move, we are told, would likely prevent around 36 million infections and 7.1 million deaths. Indeed, the Alliance maintains that, “without a massive scale-up in diagnosis, treatment rates will fall and infection rates will rise”. Hence its campaign to locate the “missing millions”.

No doubt Barry Blumberg would approve, were he still alive.

References

1. World Health Organization (2016). Combatting Hepatitis B and C to Reach Elimination by 2030. See www.who.int/hepatitis/publications/hep-elimination-by-2030-brief/en/ 
2. See www.worldhepatitisday.org/ (Accessed 31/05/2019)