Reasons For Lack of Diagnosis
The danger of hepatitis B lies in its silent transmission and progression. Many chronic hepatitis B carriers are asymptomatic (have no symptoms) and feel perfectly healthy. Chronically infected individuals may exhibit normal blood tests for liver function and be granted a clean bill of health. The diagnosis cannot be made without a specific blood test for the presence of the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), a marker for chronic infection. Since the detection of hepatitis B is so easily missed, even by doctors, it is also up to the patient to specifically request the HBsAg test. Early detection not only benefits the person tested, but prevents infection from being passed silently from one child to another, and from one generation to another.
In addition, misconceptions about the endemic nature of hepatitis B in the API population and the efficacy of US vaccination programs has led many individuals and health-care providers to overlook the need for testing for APIs.
Read more about this topic: Jade Ribbon Campaign
Famous quotes containing the words reasons for, reasons and/or lack:
“Happy the man who has been able to know the reasons for things.”
—Virgil [Publius Vergilius Maro] (70–19 B.C.)
“Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)