Research: Hepatitis B Among Asian Americans

BACKGROUND:

San Francisco has the highest liver cancer rate in the nation and while less than 3 in 1,000 of the general US population has chronic HBV infection, 1 in 10 people in the API community can be living with undiagnosed infection. APIs are 100 times more likely to suffer from chronic HBV infection and 4 times more likely to die from liver cancer compared with the general population.

In San Francisco, 84-percent of individuals infected with chronic HBV were Asian/Pacific Islanders; 80-percent were immigrants.

Only 21-percent of people diagnosed with HBV seek medical treatment.

This news has important implications for San Francisco, since Asian/Pacific Islanders comprise 25-percent of the population. It reinforces the urgency of San Francisco's recent initiative to vaccinate all of its Asian/Pacific Islander residents, but also points to the need to address the large population of people who are already infected.

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