Hepatitis C is curable in Ghana – Dr Nsiah-Asare

By Fauzeeya JAMAL-DEEN, Accra

Presidential Advisor on Health, at the Office of the President, Dr Anthony Nsiah-Asare has revealed that Ghana can test, treat, and cure Hepatitis C cases in the country.

According to him, this is possible through the partnership with the Egyptian government to bring an end to Hepatitis C prevalence in the country as Egypt has developed vaccines and is almost at the stage of eliminating the disease.

He noted that Ghana has taken advantage of the one million doses of vaccines opportunity rolled out by the Egyptian government to help other African countries cure Hepatitis.

“They are giving us 15,000 doses in all. The first 3,000 doses were brought in March which we have started using. For the first time, we have 19 treatment centres across Ghana in all the 16 regions. People are tested and put on treatment,” he said.

Dr Nsiah-Asare stated that government is learning from Egypt to eliminate hepatitis C in the country as it remains one of the major causes of liver cancer.

He spoke at the opening of the 2023 Africa HepatoPancreatoBiliary Cancer Consortium (AHPBCC), where over 200 attendees from across Africa, Europe, and the United States gathered to discuss new strategies for risk prevention, early detection, and improved survival of patients with HepatoPancreatoBiliary cancers.

The aim of the conference is to expand medical knowledge especially in liver, biliary tract, and pancreatic cancers through collaborations, publications, and support of early career medical researchers.

“Hopefully with what we have put in place and our health professionals also taking part in this conference, they will learn something to give quality care to hepatitis and HepatoPancreatoBiliary cancers cases we have in the country,” Dr Nsiah-Asare said. 

He also said that government is yet to put together a bill to regulate organ transplantation in Ghana.

According to him, Ghana has been undertaking kidney and eye transplantation and the country is looking forward to adding liver transplantation and IVFs.

“I know that the ministry of health is working on it. It will go to cabinet and then to parliament and I know that we will have a very strong organ transplantation act which will back everything we are doing,” he added.

On his part, Professor of Surgery at the Ain Shams University in Egypt, Dr Amr Abdelaal called for at least one liver transplant centre in each of the five regions in Africa to treat the high liver cancer cases on the continent.

He noted that South Africa and Egypt are the only countries in Africa that currently have a liver transplantation programme.

He alluded that Africa is confronted with various challenges that are hindering its ability to undertake liver transplantation surgeries.

“We have a lot of problems concerning the finance, a lot of problems concerning the training, the centres and if we consider the political issues in some countries, we will never move forward one step. The best way in this condition is to solve the problem one by one. To have the passion to do the operation, to have a local team to highly motivated to do it and we will have a lot of direct and indirect benefit from launching such a programme. That is why it is important,” Dr Abdelaal explained.

This initiative, he said will help a lot of patients (pediatric and others) in need of this highly complicated surgery.

Dr Abdelaal also revealed that currently, Egypt has collaborated with Cote D’Ivoire to establish a liver transplant unit in Abidjan, where his team has successfully performed their first case of liver transplantation.

He noted that the AHPBCC conference looks forward to train young professional to replicate this success in other African countries.

President of the Ghana Association for the Study of Liver and Digestive Diseases (GASLIDD), Professor Yaw Asante Awuku also urged the public to take advantage of the ongoing free hepatitis testing and treatment in Ghana to reduce the prevalence of the disease.

“Currently, we are looking at prevalence of hepatitis B in Ghana as about 10%, so 1 in 10 Ghanaians has hepatitis B and those with liver cancer, about 75 percent of them are as a result of hepatitis B.”

“Hepatitis B is transmitted commonly from mother to child. When you’re old and you have sexual exposure to someone who has hepatitis B, your probability of getting a chronic disease is very low. So usually, it is childhood. That is why when you look at the programme, we have vaccination for children, but for adult you have to pay and get yourself vaccinated,” he said.

Professor Awuku therefore encouraged the public to get tested.

“If you’re negative, get vaccinated. If you’re positive, we can link you to care and we can do everything to prevent you from developing liver cancer or liver cirrhosis,” he added.