Further efforts needed to eliminate hepatitis B

China has made significant progress in reducing mother-to-child transmission of hepatitis B, but further efforts are needed to identify and manage millions of existing cases and provide multidisciplinary treatment to reduce related deaths, medical experts say.

Wang Yu, chairman of the Chinese Foundation for Hepatitis Prevention and Control, said the positivity rate of hepatitis B surface antigen among children under age 5 in China fell to about 0.3 percent in 2020, compared with an infection rate of around 10 percent among the general population in the early 1990s.

In the past, many infants were infected with the virus transmitted through the blood of the mother during childbirth.