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By Gloria Ikibah

As the world marks the 2026, World Hepatitis Day on July 28, Rotary leaders have called for stronger public awareness, wider access to testing and affordable vaccination against hepatitis, warning that the disease continues to pose a major public health threat despite receiving far less attention than other infectious diseases.

The call was made on Tuesday during a joint Maternal and Child Health and Hepatitis intervention organised by the Rotary Club of Abuja Apo Resettlement and the Rotary Club of Abuja Metro at the Apo Resettlement Primary Health Care Centre in Abuja to mark World Hepatitis Day.

The outreach combined free hepatitis screening and vaccination with maternal and child healthcare services, including the distribution of birth kits to pregnant women and nursing mothers.

Director of Community Service, Rotary Club of Abuja Metro, Rotarian Hauwa Abbas, said the collaboration was designed to expand Rotary’s impact by working alongside its partner club within its adopted community.

According to her, the project focused on healthcare  education and hepatitis interventions, with this year’s World Hepatitis Day providing an opportunity to offer free counselling, testing and vaccination.

She said: “We are engaging in health projects, educational projects and environmental projects this year. Today is World Hepatitis Day. We are here to offer counselling, free testing and free vaccinations for those that seek medical intervention.

“We came to this community because it is the community of our adopted partners, the Rotary Club of Abuja Apo Resettlement. This is a partnership, so we decided to work together to enhance our intervention support.”

She disclosed that the project cost between N500,000 and N1 million, depending on the number of beneficiaries.
Highlighting the growing burden of hepatitis, Rotarian Abbas described the disease as an emerging public health concern that now deserves greater attention.

She urged government and development partners to invest more in awareness campaigns and make vaccination affordable for ordinary Nigerians.

“Hepatitis currently is really high in different communities.

“Of course, now it is more alarming than HIV because HIV has been there for a long time. A lot of awareness has been put into HIV through the government, through civil society, through NGOs and CBOs and other stakeholders. So now the focus should shift to hepatitis because there are lots of opportunistic diseases that can arise connected to hepatitis.

“First of all, we need to increase awareness. Awareness is really important because if there is no awareness, there will be no understanding of hepatitis.

“There are different types of hepatitis by the way. The second thing is to ensure that we get, whether it’s international sponsorship or corporate sponsorship, to ensure that the vaccination is subsidised.

“Two, three years ago, the vaccination, you could get it in government hospitals for N1,000 to N2,000.

“Now, to get vaccinated, one dose is between N5,000 to N8,000 in government hospitals. Remember, there are three doses. So you can imagine it’s capital intensive for families to be able to complete the doses.

“So what should we do? To ensure that we get partners and funders, whether it’s corporate organisations. Corporate organisations can tap into their CSR pockets to ensure that things are subsidised for community people”, Abbas explained.

President of the Rotary Club of Abuja Apo Resettlement, Rotarian Christian Njoku, disclosed that more than 100 residents had already turned out for hepatitis vaccination.

“Today we’re actually embarking on two projects.

“The first one is actually maternal and child health projects where we actually have 100 birthing kits we wanted to give to pregnant women and people that just delivered the baby.

“Then the second project is hepatitis. We’re actually giving out hepatitis vaccine for free. That’s the second project and they’re all ongoing.

“As it is now we are almost going above 100 and more people are still coming because we all know what hepatitis is.

“Hepatitis is actually a deadly disease that actually affects the liver and can actually take away someone’s life.

“Rotary decided to give us the vaccine for free and this vaccine is for three months, once in each month.

“So today, the next time we’ll be coming is by this time next month, August, then we’ll finish the remaining one by September”, he said.

Njoku explained that the vaccine provides long-term protection.

While acknowledging government efforts, he urged authorities to intensify awareness campaigns in rural communities.

“This vaccine lasts for 10 good years.

“Well, anyway, the government is actually trying their best and that is where Rotary also come in to help the government expand more, create more awareness.

“The government doesn’t have that time to go into the rural areas to create awareness and make sure that the people are taking this vaccine.

“So I only plead to the government, they should actually try as much as possible, see how they can go into the grassroots, go into the rural areas to create more awareness and to make sure there are enough facilities for hepatitis”, he stated.

Also speaking, Past Rotary International District Governor, Rotarian Ayoola Oyedokun described hepatitis as one of Africa’s silent killers, stressing that ignorance and poor testing remain major obstacles to controlling the disease.

“As we all know that hepatitis is one of the silent killers, which even kills faster than malaria in these sub-Saharan countries.

“And we have some that are prevalent in Africa, Nigeria, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and hepatitis D. And these are some of the silent killers, which is a liver infectious disease.

“And the major problem we have is that a lot of people are not being tested. And when you are not being tested, that means you do not know your status.

“And the moment we don’t know our status, we are not careful on how we know we prevent it from spreading to others”, he noted.

He explained that Rotary’s intervention centres on advocacy, screening and encouraging people to know their hepatitis status before complications develop.

“So why Rotary has come in and why the Rotary Action Group has also come in is in the place of advocacy and in the place of testing. And let people be aware about the fact that this disease exists and anybody can be a carrier of this disease.

“And when we know our status, then we can prevent it from spreading either by taking the vaccines to prevent us from getting this disease.

“Or if we know our status and we are positive, then we now know how to get the cure. Although it doesn’t have a cure, but it has a system in which it can reduce the rate of it being a killer disease.

“Because you know your status, then you know how you keep on treating it in that direction. So that’s where Rotary comes in”, he said. 

Oyedokun noted that hepatitis screening has now become a regular feature of Rotary medical outreaches, although funding constraints continue to limit the scale of interventions.

“Rotary has taken it, not only today that it’s Hepatitis Day, but every other medical outreach, medical interventions that we are doing, we always include Hepatitis B, C and D testing in every of our interventions.

“Funding is one of the major problems that we always have.
“In polio, Rotary has taken it as a flagship project and it’s been 100% funded by Rotary.

“But in case of all these things, we leave it to action groups, we leave it to the district, we leave it to clubs to take it as part of the project.

“And that’s why the action group is working with every district, every club to see how we can partner with them.

“Let’s support you with testing kits. You make your investments in the vaccines because it’s not enough just being tested.

“If we get, you know, like today now we have tested over 100 people, we don’t know how many of them will be positive.
“And definitely when you know that there’s a positive person, you need to refer them to the next health care centre so that they can commence the treatment process”, he added.

General Secretary of the Rotarian Action Group for Hepatitis Eradication, Rotarian Oye Oyewo, said this year’s World Hepatitis Day theme underscores the urgency of acting now.

“Today is World Hepatitis Day. And the theme for this year is Hepatitis Can’t Wait. So we too should not wait.

“That is why we are here in this community to make sure that we give our best and make sure that people are vaccinated, tested.

“If they are negative then they get vaccinated. And this is to make sure that we have a healthy community”, he said.

He described hepatitis as inflammation of the liver that often remains undetected until it is too late.

“Hepatitis is just inflammation of the liver. “And because it doesn’t have symptoms, that is why they call it silent killer.

“At any time that anybody have symptoms from Hepatitis, then it is too late”, he added.

Explaining the different forms of the disease, Oyewo said: “We have A, B, C, D, E.

“A, D, E are the ones that the body system can fight easily.

“But for B and C, B doesn’t have cure but it can be prevented.

“C has cure but has no vaccine.

“So that is why today we are screening people for B and C.”

He commended Rotary’s achievements in the fight against polio but called for similar commitment towards hepatitis eradication.

“Rotary is doing well in the area of polio. We have done very well in eradicating polio in many countries except for the one that we are working on now.

“But we need to look at what next, what is the post polio engagement that Rotary is going to be looking at”, Oyewo asserted.

According to him, hepatitis deserves greater priority because of its long-term impact on public health and productivity.

“I would say Rotary is doing very well but we should do more because the only thing is that because Hepatitis does not have symptoms.

“So a lot of people that are carrying it can’t even know, awareness is very low.

“So that’s why we are doing campaign and on every 28th July, which is declared as World Hepatitis Day, we always join WHO, Federal Government and some other partners to make sure that we reach out to people”, he stressed.