In order to monitor progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 2030 target to combat viral hepatitis, this report provides data on hepatitis B and C prevention, incidence, diagnosis, treatment, cure/viral suppression, and mortality in European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA) countries with data collected in 2019.
This brief will present a snapshot of hepatitis B and C testing in the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA), discussing progress made towards the European action plan 2020 testing target, focussing on key populations and settings for testing, barriers to testing, and testing policies.
Urgent action is required to improve efforts to prevent hepatitis B and C infections in the EU/EEA and the UK if the region is to meet the 2020 targets for the elimination of viral hepatitis as a serious threat to public health. Significant gaps in the reported data in relation to prevalence and prevention of HBV and HCV in EU/EEA and the UK present a major challenge to monitoring progress towards the targets for elimination of hepatitis.
ECDC coordinates the enhanced surveillance for hepatitis A, B and C to help countries define epidemiological trends or transmission patterns among newly diagnosed cases.
World Hepatitis Day on 28 July provides an opportunity each year to increase the awareness and understanding of viral hepatitis.
Approximately four in five people living with hepatitis B and three out of four people with hepatitis C infection across the European Union and European Economic Area (EU/EEA) and the UK have not yet been diagnosed. This is a major obstacle on the way towards the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for health in 2030 as highlighted by ECDC on occasion of World Hepatitis Day.
For 2018, 30 EU/EEA Member States reported 24 588 cases of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. When the five countries that only reported acute cases are excluded, the number of cases is 24 034, which corresponds to a crude rate of 6.0 cases per 100 000 population.