On Tuesday, 21 May 2013, "The Economist" organized a conference in Madrid evocatively titled "Hepatitis C: The Silent Pandemic", which aimed to give rise to a debate about this disease that kills more than 300,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Professor María Dolores Navarro participated in one of the debates that took place.
The objective of the conference was to create a discussion about this disease, which is already the subject of a report by The Economist titled “The Silent Pandemic”. This report aims to raise awareness about the magnitude of the problem of hepatitis C and foster the creation of measures to prevent transmission of the virus, particularly through poor healthcare practices such as the sharing of needles by more than one person, which is the main means of transmission in developed countries.
Professor Navarro explained, “Single-use syringes weren't around in the 1950s and 1960s, and equipment had to be sterilized thoroughly when it was used on several patients in hospitals. Problems often arose when insufficient hygiene measures were used: the disease was easily passed from an infected person to a non-infected person”.
According to the WHO, this health issue requires urgent attention, since it causes 350,000 deaths a year and there are 150 million carriers of the virus. Furthermore, most people are unaware of the rate of infection worldwide and that the disease is completely preventable and largely curable.
The debate in which Dr. Navarro participated addressed whether or not money should be invested in screening. The professor said, “As a doctor who specializes in preventive medicine and public health, but also as a member of the board of the European Patients' Forum, it is more helpful to invest in prevention than in the complications that follow, especially when there is a cure”.
