At the Boston World Trade Center, Gilead Sciences hosted a lunch at the annual Asian American Journalists Association convention called The Hidden Truth: Hepatitis B and the Asian American Community.  While many attendees were drawn in by the promise of free food, it was an informative event presenting some alarming medical facts that still seem to be relatively unknown, or simply not addressed, in many Asian communities:

•    Half of all people in the United States with chronic Hepatitis B are Asian.
•    One in ten foreign-born Asian Americans are living with chronic Hep B infections.  That’s more than 20 times higher than in the total U.S. population.
•    Especially among Asians, there’s serious social stigma attached to Hep B implying risky lifestyle choices, when actually most cases of Hep B were passed on through child birth.
•    Asian Americans are 2.7 times more likely to develop Hep B than Caucasians.
•    As many as two-thirds of Asian Americans with chronic Hep B don’t even know they have it, and symptoms like liver disease don’t appear until it’s practically too late.
•    It’s exponentially more communicable than HIV since it can be transmitted through saliva.

Yet media coverage of Hepatitis B has been scarce. Not only had many attendees heard, here for the first time, how widespread and serious it is, many didn't know how it can be prevented and treated if one decides to be screened and seek help.

Last month, when I attended the New York Asian American Film Festival, a public service announcement was shown before several films to shed more light on the disease's prevalence.

While seven oral and injectible drugs are approved to treat Hep B, and Gilead as a drug developer may stand to benefit, wider awareness of the prevalence, risk, prevention and treatment is vital.