Maldives Declared Hepatitis B Free by WHO

The HPA said in a post on X today that Maldives has been declared a Hepatitis B free country by the WHO. The decision was taken after years of work on hepatitis vaccination, a large number of children in Maldives have been vaccinated and no cases of Hepatitis B have been reported in school children aged 6 to 7 years.

In addition, measures are already being taken to regularly screen pregnant women for Hepatitis B and treat positive cases, provide preventive therapy to babies born to positive mothers and protect children from the disease.

Hepatitis B is a very dangerous infectious disease of the human liver. The disease is caused by direct transmission of the virus from one infected person to another.