Thinking About Liver Education During Hepatitis Awareness Month

October is the time to celebrate the establishment of hepatitis awareness month decades ago to call national attention to the health crisis of hepatitis infections. At that time, a medical solution to the crisis was elusive, due to several "yet to be identified hepatitis viruses" including one known as non A-non B hepatitis.

It is also a time to express our sincere thanks and applaud the dedication and commitment of those scientists who made the breakthrough discoveries that gave power to the fight. Following decades devoted to searching for answers, Michael Houghton, PhD, Nobel Laureate, and his dedicated team of researchers, who identified hepatitis C in 1989. Houghton and thousands of scientists, physicians, healthcare providers and millions of concerned volunteers afford us much to celebrate on this anniversary.

Let's celebrate this hepatitis awareness month by adding liver education to efforts to save lives by empowering millions of uninformed individuals to learn how to protect their liver and their life. This Awareness campaign, in addition to the campaign promoting the elimination of viral hepatitis, calls attention to the dire need to provide a national liver education campaign that will address the "hesitance issue" among at -risk infected individuals and include understandable, relatable and memorable information for all children in schools, for government agencies and the military.

There is also a dire need to provide uninformed teachers, professors, counselors, and parents with easily shared understandable information and teaching tools to motivate patients, children and adults to develop healthy food and lifestyle behaviors to protect their liver.

Unfortunately, the fact that information about the liver describing why and how to protect the internal life creating and supporting liver cells that has been absent in schools for decades, underlies the current tragic consequences of ignorance about how hepatitis viruses attack and destroy liver cells ability to perform the many miracles creating and sustaining hundreds of vitally important life supporting body parts and functions we take for granted.

This ongoing problem, in addition to numerous other liver related potentially preventable diseases, urgently calls for an effective national liver education campaign.

The Liver Health Initiative's website has a variety of age appropriate teaching tools to assist you in your efforts to eliminate viral hepatitis.