We know that you, your loved ones, friends or employees lives may have been or will be touched by this disease. Here are the facts you need to know.
It is estimated that there are over 130,000 people in the State of Missouri who have hepatitis C. The majority of these patients are in the St. Louis Metropolitan area (about 45,000) and in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
Hepatitis and Liver Disease in the United States
- Hepatitis C is 5 times more prevalent than HIV/AIDS.
- 25,000,000 Americans – one in every 12 – are or have been afflicted with liver, biliary or gallbladder disease.
- 20,300 Americans die each year from chronic liver disease and cirrhosis; 360,000 people are hospitalized each year due to cirrhosis.
- Alcoholic liver disease and chronic hepatitis C are the leading causes of cirrhosis.
- An estimated 25,000 people are infected with hepatitis C each year.
- There are over 5 million people who are or have been infected with hepatitis C; approximately 4 million are chronically infected. Approximately 50% to 70% of people infected do not know that they have the virus.
- 10,000 – 12,000 people die of complications from hepatitis C each year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimate that the number of annual deaths from hepatitis C will triple in the next 10 – 20 years.
- Hepatitis B is responsible for 5,000 – 6,000 deaths annually.
- One out of every 250 people is a carrier of hepatitis B and can pass it on to others, often unknowingly.
- 78,000 people are infected with the hepatitis B virus each year; over 1.25 million people are chronically infected.
- Up to 90% of pregnant women who are carriers of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) could transmit the virus to their children. Due to the screening of pregnant women for HBV and vaccinations of newborns, there has been a decline in the number of infected newborns.
- Approximately 6,000 liver transplants were performed in 2006. Because of the shortage of organs, it is estimated that over 1,800 people die per year while waiting for a liver transplant. There are currently over 17,700 people waiting for a liver for transplantation.
- There were over 90,000 new infections of hepatitis A in 2001.
- The estimated medical and work loss cost per year from hepatitis B is over $700 million; the estimated medial and work loss costs per year from hepatitis C is over $1 billion.
- Asian-Americans have the highest rate of hepatitis B in the USA; the prevalence rate among Chinese Americans is 5 times higher than that of Caucasian Americans.
- African-Americans have the highest rate of infection with hepatitis C in the USA; African-Americans are more than twice as likely to be infected with the virus as non-Hispanic Caucasian Americans.
For more liver disease information, please visit the Saint Louis University Liver Center site.
