As there are a few different viruses that go by the name of ‘hepatitis’ (hepatitis A, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and now D and E have been identified), it gets fairly confusing. Briefly, hepatitis A is the one that gives you a bad case of gastroenteritis (vomiting and diarrhoea), and you tend to look yellow (jaundiced), as the infection affects your liver. The disease may last a couple of weeks and goes, leaving no lasting effects. It is spread like gastro; it can be in food or water, and often in places where there is poor hygiene.
Hepatitis B is an entirely different bug. It gets around in a similar way to the human immunodeficiency virus (sexual transmission, blood and blood products and infected needles—including unsterilised tattooing needles—and from mother to baby), but is even more infective (easy to catch) than HIV. This means that you can probably catch it from very close personal contact (like lots of kissing and that sort of thing), although this is much less common than the other means of spread.
Some populations have a higher incidence of hepatitis B than others. It is more common in some parts of South-east Asia, and among Aboriginal and Islander communities. Between 60 and 90 per cent of the people in these populations may have markers of previous infection, and about 30 per cent carry the virus in their blood stream. This is because of the high rate of transmission between mothers and babies. In the non-Asian and non-Aboriginal Australian community the rate of previous infection is about 5 per cent, and between 0.1 and 0.3 per cent of people carry the virus. A lot of these fit into the ‘high-risk’ categories of intravenous drug users and homosexual men. If you don’t identify with either of these groups, don’t feel all complacent and relieved; the bug is everywhere, and it’s not that fussy.
Hepatitis C is similar to B, but is more commonly spread through infected blood (sharing needles, etc.) than through sexual contact. It is a particularly insidious bug, usually giving no symptoms, but having a greater tendency to progress to chronic liver disease.
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