New Delhi, July 27 -- What if one of the greatest threats to our health is not something we can see, but something quietly developing within us? For millions of people, liver damage can begin and advance without an obvious warning. A person may feel healthy while a viral infection gradually increases the risk of cirrhosis, liver failure or liver cancer. This silence is what makes hepatitis especially dangerous. It delays testing, weakens urgency and allows a preventable or treatable condition to remain hidden until the consequences become far more serious.
Observed every year on 28 July, World Hepatitis Day reminds us that this silence can no longer be accepted. The 2026 theme, "Hepatitis: Let's Break It Down," calls upon countries and communities to remove the financial, social and systemic barriers that separate people from prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The message is both urgent and hopeful. Hepatitis elimination is possible, but only when information is easy to understand, testing is easy to access and treatment is easy to continue.
The scale of the challenge remains immense. Hepatitis B and C continue to cause large numbers of deaths through cirrhosis and liver cancer. Yet many of these deaths are preventable. Hepatitis B can be prevented through vaccination and controlled through treatment, while hepatitis C can now be cured in most people with oral medicines. Hepatitis A and E, commonly linked with contaminated food and water, remind us that sanitation, hygiene and safe drinking water are also essential parts of liver health.
India's response must therefore operate on several fronts at once. Testing and treatment cannot remain concentrated in a few large hospitals. They must move closer to people through district hospitals, primary health centres, blood banks, antenatal clinics, diagnostic centres and community outreach. Indian research on decentralised and same-day hepatitis C care has shown how simplified testing and faster treatment initiation can reduce the number of patients lost between diagnosis and care.
Rapid diagnostic tools and point-of-care testing can further shorten this journey. A person who screens positive should not have to make repeated journeys, lose wages or wait for weeks before receiving confirmatory testing and medical guidance. India's growing experience with affordable generic direct-acting antiviral medicines also shows that innovation is meaningful only when it lowers cost and expands access. The next step is to ensure reliable supplies, trained healthcare workers, patient counselling and follow-up across every district.
Prevention must begin even earlier. Hepatitis B can pass from mother to child during birth, making antenatal screening, timely medical intervention and the hepatitis B birth-dose vaccine critical. Maternal and child health services can integrate hepatitis B prevention into routine pregnancy care so that mothers receive timely guidance and newborns receive protection at the earliest possible stage.
India must also focus on communities that face a higher risk or greater difficulty accessing care, including patients undergoing dialysis, people requiring repeated blood transfusions, people in prisons and those who inject drugs. Reaching these groups is not only a matter of disease control. It is a test of whether our healthcare system can offer confidential, respectful and stigma-free care to everyone.
Breaking the silence around hepatitis will require awareness on a much larger and more sustained scale. Information cannot remain confined to medical institutions or a single commemorative day. Well-planned mass-media campaigns are essential to take clear, accurate and repeated messages to the wider public. Their purpose must be to make hepatitis easier to understand and early action easier to consider. People need to know that the infection can remain without symptoms, that testing is simple, that hepatitis B can be prevented through vaccination and that hepatitis C can be cured. When these facts become part of public understanding, silence is less likely to be mistaken for safety.
Awareness efforts must also be supported by trusted voices that can reduce fear, correct misinformation and encourage timely action. Doctors, community organisations, educators, public figures and people who have successfully completed treatment can all help make the message more credible and relatable. The objective should not be to create alarm, but to build confidence: confidence to ask questions, seek medical advice, consider testing and act before serious damage occurs. Awareness becomes meaningful only when information leads to informed decisions and timely care.
International experience shows what determined action can achieve. Egypt transformed one of the world's heaviest hepatitis C burdens through a nationwide campaign that tested more than 60 million people and connected those diagnosed to treatment, achieving cure rates above 98 per cent. Georgia combined large-scale screening with referral and treatment systems, screening more than 2.8 million people and treating over 80,000. The Maldives, despite its dispersed island geography, became the first country validated by the World Health Organisation for eliminating mother-to-child transmission of HIV, syphilis and hepatitis B together.
India cannot simply copy the model of another country, but it can adapt the principles behind their success: sustained institutional commitment, widespread public awareness, affordable medicines, local delivery, dependable data and a clear pathway from testing to treatment. Our scale is a challenge, but it can also become our greatest strength when credible information and accessible services reach people consistently across communities.
For individuals and families, awareness must become practical action. People should seek medical advice on hepatitis testing when they may have been exposed, ensure that recommended vaccinations are completed, insist on sterile medical, tattooing and piercing equipment, avoid sharing needles or razors, and support safe blood donation and transfusion practices. Clean water, safe food and good sanitation remain indispensable. We must also resist unscientific "liver detox" claims that can delay proper diagnosis or cause harm.
At the Illness to Wellness Foundation, we believe that wellness begins before symptoms appear. It begins when people receive reliable information, understand their risks and feel confident enough to seek timely care. Awareness campaigns must therefore do more than describe the disease. They must make an often-invisible threat easier to recognise, translate medical knowledge into practical understanding and ensure that the absence of symptoms is never confused with the absence of risk. India possesses the scientific knowledge, pharmaceutical capacity and healthcare foundations required to accelerate hepatitis elimination. What is needed now is the determination to take that knowledge beyond medical institutions and place it in the hands of every individual and family.
This World Hepatitis Day, let us break down silence with awareness, stigma with compassion, delay with early diagnosis and distance with accessible care. A hepatitis-free future must not remain an aspiration for another generation. It must become a shared public health commitment that we begin fulfilling today, because a silent disease should never be allowed a silent victory.
Views expressed are personal. The writer is the Chairperson, Advisory Council, Illness to Wellness Foundation
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.