The Mobile County Health Department is using World Hepatitis Day to remind residents that viral hepatitis remains a preventable and treatable illness, urging people across the community to get vaccinated, get tested, and seek care early if they suspect they’ve been exposed. Hepatitis is an inflammation of the liver caused by a viral infection, and if left unaddressed it can progress to serious complications, including liver failure and liver cancer.
While the overall number of hepatitis cases reported in the United States remains comparatively low, health officials say infections have not disappeared and continue to show up among certain higher-risk groups. The danger of the disease lies partly in its quietness: many people carry viral hepatitis for years without symptoms, during which the virus slowly damages the liver. By the time fatigue, pain and jaundice appear, serious harm may already be done — which is why health departments put so much weight on testing people who feel perfectly well.
“Hepatitis remains a preventable and treatable condition, but only if people are informed and take action,” said Dr. Kevin Michaels, Health Officer for Mobile County. “Vaccination, testing, and early treatment are our strongest tools.”
World Hepatitis Day, observed around the globe each summer under the auspices of the World Health Organization, is one of the few health observances dedicated to a single family of viruses, and it draws participation from health departments across Alabama and the nation. For MCHD, the day provides a deadline and a platform: a moment each year when the department’s outreach staff can push messages about liver health, vaccination records and testing availability to an audience that might otherwise never think about hepatitis at all.
The liver is the body’s chemical processing plant, filtering blood, metabolizing medications and producing the bile that digests fats. When a virus inflames it, the effects ripple across the whole body. Chronic infection can scar the organ — a condition called cirrhosis — and over time that scarring can become liver cancer, one of the harder malignancies to treat. Public health officials emphasize that this entire chain of damage can be interrupted, either by a vaccine that prevents infection in the first place or by antiviral treatment that clears the virus before the damage accumulates.
Knowing the differences
There are several distinct forms of the virus, and MCHD is using the awareness day to clarify what sets them apart. Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B can both be prevented with safe, effective vaccines, and routine immunization efforts, especially for Hepatitis B, have driven down infection rates in many communities over the years. Even so, uneven vaccination coverage and lingering risk factors mean neither virus has been eliminated.
Hepatitis A typically spreads through contaminated food and water and through close personal contact, causing an acute illness that resolves on its own but can be severe in adults and dangerous to the elderly and people with existing liver disease. Hepatitis B spreads through blood and bodily fluids and can become a lifelong infection, particularly when acquired in infancy or childhood; chronic hepatitis B is one of the leading causes of liver cancer worldwide. Vaccination against both has been part of routine childhood care in the United States for decades, which is a large part of why infection rates have fallen so far.
Hepatitis C does not yet have a preventive vaccine, but it can be identified through a simple blood test and is now highly treatable with modern antiviral medications, making early detection critical to avoiding long-term liver damage. The arrival of direct-acting antivirals in recent years transformed hepatitis C from a chronic, difficult-to-treat disease into one that most patients can cure with a course of pills — a shift that public health officials describe as one of the most significant developments in infectious disease medicine in a generation. The catch is finding the infections: many people who contracted hepatitis C decades ago still do not know they carry it.
Health officials note that some Mobile County residents face a higher risk of infection than others. That includes people with limited access to vaccination, individuals who inject drugs, people with multiple sexual partners, and those who have recently arrived from regions where hepatitis is more common. Healthcare workers also carry elevated risk because of routine exposure to blood and other bodily fluids on the job.
For each of those groups, the recommended response is different, but it starts the same way: a conversation with a healthcare provider about personal risk and a blood test to establish whether infection has occurred. People born in decades before widespread vaccination, travelers to countries where the viruses circulate widely, and anyone with a history of injection drug use are among those most often encouraged to seek testing even without symptoms.
What residents should do
To help residents protect themselves, MCHD is encouraging everyone to stay current on recommended vaccinations, including Hepatitis A and B; to talk with a healthcare provider about hepatitis testing, particularly if any risk factors apply; to avoid sharing needles and to use protection during sexual activity; and to seek prompt medical attention if symptoms such as fatigue, yellowing skin or eyes, abdominal pain, or unusually dark urine appear.
Those symptoms deserve particular attention because they are easy to dismiss. Fatigue and abdominal discomfort get attributed to stress, diet and ordinary illness; the yellowing of the skin and eyes that doctors call jaundice is the clearest warning sign the liver can send, and it should always prompt a medical visit. Dark urine, pale stools and unexplained nausea round out the set of signals that the liver may be in trouble.
For residents who don’t have a regular primary care provider, Mobile County is served by four Community Health Centers that offer care on a sliding fee scale based on income: Family Health, Accordia, Franklin Primary Health Center, and Mostellar Medical Center. MCHD says these centers, along with a resident’s own physician, are a good starting point for anyone wondering whether they should be vaccinated or tested.
Community health centers occupy a crucial position in the local safety net. Spread across the city and county, they serve patients regardless of ability to pay, providing primary care, chronic disease management and preventive services — including the vaccines and screenings that World Hepatitis Day highlights — to residents who might otherwise go years between doctor visits. For uninsured and underinsured families, the sliding fee structure keeps the cost of a routine screening within reach, which is exactly how health officials hope to catch infections before they become expensive emergencies.
“World Hepatitis Day is an opportunity to remind our community that prevention and early detection save lives,” Dr. Michaels added. “Together, we can reduce the impact of hepatitis in Mobile County.”
Local health officials have repeatedly stressed that the department’s job does not end with a single awareness day. Outreach staff continue year-round to connect residents with immunization services, sexually transmitted infection screening and communicable disease follow-up, and hepatitis testing and vaccination are woven into those ongoing programs. The awareness campaign simply raises the volume for a week each year, in the hope that residents who hear the message will act on it — book the vaccine, order the blood test, and ask the questions — long after the observance itself has passed.
Public health officials also use awareness campaigns to push back against a common misconception: that hepatitis is someone else’s disease, confined to specific risk groups or distant countries. In reality, the baby boom generation has been a particular focus of hepatitis C screening efforts nationwide, because many members of that generation contracted the virus decades ago through blood transfusions, medical procedures or other exposures that occurred before the virus was even identified. Health departments across Alabama continue to encourage people in that age group to ask for a one-time hepatitis C test, regardless of how healthy they feel.
Pregnant women are another group for whom testing has become routine, since hepatitis B can pass from mother to child at birth and early intervention — vaccination and preventive treatment for the newborn — is highly effective at breaking that chain of transmission. The childhood vaccination schedule that today’s parents encounter at well-baby visits is the direct result of decades of public health work to make that transmission story rare.
MCHD’s message on vaccination carries practical weight for adults as well. Many adults in Mobile County have never completed the hepatitis B vaccine series, either because they were born before the childhood schedule included it or because their families moved and records were lost. Adults can catch up on the series at their physician’s office or through the health department, and officials note that the same visits offer an opportunity to review other immunizations that may have lapsed.
The department’s encouragement to “seek care early” also extends to residents who know they have been exposed — for instance, after a needle-stick injury, shared equipment or a sexual partner’s diagnosis. In those situations, timing matters: post-exposure protocols for hepatitis B work best when started quickly, and a prompt blood test can establish a baseline that guides follow-up. Waiting to see whether symptoms develop is the one response officials consistently warn against, because the virus can do its damage silently in the meantime.
For a community of Mobile County’s size, the cumulative effect of small actions — one completed vaccine series, one negative test that prompts a family conversation, one patient connected to curative treatment — is what officials point to when they talk about reducing the disease’s local footprint. The tools exist, the centers that provide them are spread across the county, and World Hepatitis Day serves as the annual reminder to use them.