Urgent action needed to achieve viral hepatitis elimination
The headline figures from WHO’s 2024 Global Hepatitis Report, released at the World Hepatitis Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, on April 9, make for stark reading. 1·3 million people died from viral hepatitis in 2022: the same number as killed by tuberculosis, second only to COVID-19 as the leading communicable cause of death, and an increase on the 2019 estimate of 1·1 million. There were 1·2 million new hepatitis B infections and almost 1 million new hepatitis C infections in 2022—marginally lower than 2019 estimates, but not substantially so.