QUESTIONS ASKED IN THE COMMONS BY THE HBV TRUST 2014
First please review our UK adult and child pandemic of HBV as tested to be present on NHS wards.
Analysis estimates some 35,000 - 70,000 undiagnosed child HBV cases, and a tripling of mainly child acquired adult infection to some 470,000, a national catastrophe.
The Feb 2014 prevalence of childhood HBV in English Hospital Wards
Table S 7. Individuals testing positive for HBsAg
General Wards (110,464 HBV tests) / Child Wards(10,121 HBV tests)
2008 / 2.5% / 0.5%
2009 / 1.8% / 0.9%
2010 / 1.6% / 0.8%
2011 / 1.6% / 0.8%
Total HBV Prevalence / 1.9% / 0.7%
OUR LETTER PLEADING FOR RECOGNITION OF THE TERRIFYING FIGURES PUBLISHED BY THE GOVT AND GOVT ACTION
Dear Jane Ellison Minister for Public Health
Original Text
I recently met with representatives of the Hepatitis B Positive Trust to discuss the diagnosis and vaccination of hepatitis B.
Firstly, there appears to be a clear relationship between hepatitis B and immigration. In June last year two leading Hepatologists wrote to the Lancet1 highlighting that the prevalence of hepatitis B in this country has risen substantially as a consequence of immigration. The Hepatitis B Positive Trust’s Report Going Endemic estimated in 2013 that 510,000 HBV patients are now in the UK2. Whilst a 2010 survey from CUSHI-B3 found that 81% of the 1147 HBV questioned were born outside the UK.
Secondly, they raised concerns over the current chronic failure in delivering HBV vaccinations to the 25% of our children now born into high or very high risk endemic communities. In 1997 the World Health Assembly passed resolutions for hepatitis b which included universal vaccination programmes for such communities; our failure to enact this good practice has helped result in 40,000 UK children now being lastingly hepatitis b infected, with 0.7% of children and 1.6% of adults testing positive for hbv on wards during the 2008 - 20114 period.
I urge you to look into this issue and meet representatives and doctors of the Hepatitis B Trust.
Yours ever
David Amess MP
1 The Lancet, Volume 381, Issue 9884, Pages 2164 - 2165, 22 June 2013
2 Going Endemic Demographic HBV Prevalance Update ( Pages 8 – 11. 2013
3 CUSHI-B. Collaborative UK Study of Hepatitis B Infection (
4 Health Protection Agency. Annual Review 2011: Supplementary Tables ( Table S7, page 7. 2011
5 Department of Health, Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer, Volume One, On the State of the Nation’s Public Health. 2012
OUR GOVT’S INSANE NONSENSICAL REPLY IS TO SAY IT CANNOT RECOGNISE IT’S PUBLISHED FIGURES AND ARCHIVE THEM
THE HBV TRUST RESPONSE
The Minister and PHE display several very disturbing cases of wantonly ignoring the Health Protection Agency Data and the HBV Trust’s HBV Prevalence figures and their deadly implications.
In particular the Minister and PHE seem convinced the blood bank 1993 guesstimate of prevalence is “proof” no HBV positive migrant has come to the UK, and there’s a fantasy a guess of 22 times less than our child ward prevalence when tested is the level for children and this with a very infectious mainly child acquired bug.
The last HPA audited 100,000 HBV ward tests have shown a level of 1.64% in our “Going Endemic” Report and this figure has not been acknowledged? Has PHE forgotten it was their HPA department that thst tested and compiled the figure!?
They have to acknowledge their publications, if not ours, surely? Further the fact of 3 month pregnant mums testing .55% 2008-2011 and men usually being twice as hbv infected as women has not been recognised either. To background the madness of using a donation figure to hide a booming prevalence, it is important to realise that few donations happen from BME citizens, just one organ a week in the entire UK is donated see
Basically the fact our children have tested 0.7% or 1 in 140 positive on our wards for hbv over the last 7 years is not admitted. We are told their guesstimate is .03%, based again on a blood bank source that has never tested a single child and is 20 times less than the prevalence of the last 10,000 HPA hospital audited real child checks is excellent and accurate instead. I mean to guess 1 in 3000 children have hbv when the wards say 1 in 140 is pretty much gross negligence on a titanic scale for thousands upon thousands of innocent children.
Ignoring the 0.7% HPA/PHE figure now is as mad as ignoring the Liverpool study was 10 years ago.
Liverpool noted 8.7% of children in one ethnic group were catching hbv acutely from their communities horizontally before age 5, and we have ignored screening 3 million ethnic kids since. When prisons and prisoners tested 8% catching hbv or core antibody positive we invested tens of millions for decades. Let everyone be aware these 3 million endemic and super endemic community kids are up to 20 times more likely to progress to incurable undiagnosed infection than prisoners when they catch HBV. Why should a bleeding millionaire footballer be able to raise his hand and instantly access someone who is able to avoid hbv infection, but not a child in school when they raise their hand, why should being in Prison mean vastly better (many times more vaccinated) care for hbv than being in an ethnic UK pushchair?
Don’t the 1 in 140 kids on our wards incurable for HBV even deserve a proper answer? Don’t they need our actions quickly also?
The Minister/PHE says migration in no way increases hepatitis yet hospital liver units in a recent national study report 81% of hep patients are migrants and testing Black Asian and Other pregnant mums shows them to be a mean average of 1.6% hbv positive also. She understands we estimate 35,000 child carriers based on real tests and demographic WHO audited real hbv prevalence’s but just prefers a 0.3% prevalence and 3500 for children figures from a flawed source.
This is politics not medicine, this is where the spin kills people.
Basic best practice regarding border hbv testing and also hbv child vaccination is unavailable due to these huge ignorance and dishonesty barriers at both political and health department levels Not one hospital trust has a figure for completing hbv mom child vaccinations, all report disclosure issues. With a silent infector killer virus tripling in our midst we do not have even basic critical facts.
The stability in IDU, Criminal and Sex Worker prevalence and vast focus spent there on, is hailed as proof of "success". Yet the far larger migrant group of children, workers, healthcare infections, dads and mums is still mainly diagnosed at 3 months pregnant or at end stage disease levels. General Public and Ethnic citizens have huge problems in comparison to IDU’s in accessing care; for hundreds of thousands death has been far more likely than diagnosis for the last 2 decades, our inner cities are commonly reporting 2% of mums in their maternities are diagnosed with childhood acquired hbv. On our helpline many, even most hbv positive migrants, workers and children have been given little idea of what they have, how it infects or affects and if their children are even vaccinated safely is now an unmentionable zero data issue.
My biggest fear is the complete absence of any General Public or NHS understanding that horizontal transmission from endemic community to child is HBV’s prime route globally, and that blood hygiene and HBV are just missing from national awareness. So many (hundreds on the helpline) super endemic community callers (sub Saharan Africans, Asylum seekers and Pacific Rim 2 million people) Workers and Travellers report being born in the UK yet getting hbv anyway. Nearly all these infected callers were recommended by WHO or EU health and safety for hbv vaccination.
Leslie Charlotte MP and Dr Mann and many others are keen on blood hygiene for schools. Dr Dadabhoy and Dr Phillip Lee MP are asking for border testing but it’s in the upper house and with up to 150,000 new hep cases expected over the coming decade, no one is aware some 50,000 more cases of easy to prevent end stage liver disease are ours to prevent here and now, no Lords replied.
Finally it has to be contended that HBV is also a serious disease and infectious threat equal to TB, which is why WHO have decreed National Awareness Days for nations to warn their citizens about the transmission risks and vaccinations for both. TB infects 8 million and kills over a million annually; HBV infects 400 million and kills 1 million annually. Although far less infectious HBV is 50 times more common and remains in people far longer undetected, it has infected at some point 1 in 8 children on Earth and some 2 million UK and 2 billion Worldwide citizens so far. HBV is I suggest seriously fatal, 90 million are expected to die of it, more than WW2 and HIV combined.
HBV although just a blood virus is however 100 times more infectious in blood than HIV, just 3 pricks from a school compass, a borrowed razor, eyebrow thread or ear piercing gun stained with up to 28 day old hbv blood will routinely infect. No one has considered that just 10 rounds of boxing with HBV tends to guarantee transmission and that being a boy is a contact sport. Boys are commonly twice as infected as girls globally and the fact that plasters are as important as condoms has simply never been understood or taught by PHE yet. These simple facts WHO have requested nations to tell their populations, why am I trying gamely to tell our Minister, PHE and Department for Health for the 10th year and after 20 years of Match of the Day?
It is a serious infectious threat equal to TB, especially for our inner city children, our 0.7% HBV positive child wards and their hbv positive children are telling us that clearly since 2008. We can and must do more for them.
Yours Sincerely
Paul Desmond