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:
“One of the reasons for the failure of feminism to dislodge deeply held perceptions of male and female behaviour was its insistence that women were victims, and men powerful patriarchs, which made a travesty of ordinary people’s experience of the mutual interdependence of men and women.”
—Rosalind Coward (b. 1953)
“Could truth perhaps be a woman who has reasons for not permitting her reasons to be seen? Could her name perhaps be—to speak Greek—Baubo?... Oh, those Greeks! They understood how to live: to do that it is necessary to stop bravely at the surface, the fold, the skin, to adore the appearance, to believe in forms, in tones, in words, in the whole Olympus of appearance! Those Greeks were superficial—out of profundity!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Wulf, my Wulf! Waiting for you
has made me ill, your seldom coming,
this sorrowing mood—not lack of meat.
Do you hear, Eadwacer? Our poor whelp
a wolf bears off to the wood.”
—Unknown. Eadwacer (l. 13–17)