“Progress towards the global goal of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030 is off track.” 

That is the first key point in WHO’s Global Hepatitis Report 2026 – simple, stark and, if anything, an understatement. The report, released to coincide with the World Hepatitis Summit in April this year, is packed with the latest data and the latest data is not encouraging.  

Hepatitis B mortality on the rise 

Yes, there are instances of real progress, with some countries exemplars of what commitment can deliver, but at a global level there is collective failure. Perhaps the clearest example of this failure is what is happening to annual hepatitis B mortality: in 2016 WHO’s 194 Member States committed to reducing it by 65 per cent by 2030. Yet since 2016 it has been steadily increasing! Instead of falling, it has increased by 17 per cent.  

How is it that we are going in the wrong direction? 

The easy answer to that is that we have diagnosed less than one quarter of the 300 million people living with hepatitis B and, of those diagnosed less than one quarter are receiving the daily pill that could prevent them dying. And it’s not as if testing or treatment are unaffordable for the vast majority: a hepatitis B test costs less than US$ 1 and treatment less than US$ 30 for a year.  

Availability and affordability not the issue 

Indeed the availability and affordability of prevention, diagnosis and treatment interventions across viral hepatitis is not the issue, in part thanks to the licences that MPP has secured from industry. From a scientific point of view we have what it takes to prevent the vast majority of the 1.3 million deaths happening each year. But we are not doing it. It’s as if we are standing on a dock watching someone drowning. We’re standing there with a lifebelt in our hands but we’re not throwing it to them. We’re just standing and watching. Maybe we don’t understand what’s happening; maybe we don’t care; maybe we just can’t be bothered. Whichever, it really is unacceptable. 

We can mobilise when we want to  

Of course there are always ‘reasons’ for inaction. There’s no money; health systems have been weakened; demand is too fragmented; it’s not a priority; it’s just too difficult. Mysteriously, all these insurmountable obstacles melt away when we decide to do something. We can mobilise when we want to. Most recently, Ebola has shown that.  

So it simply boils down to political will. And that is relevant this month, as experts, advocates, policymakers and people affected by hepatitis gather at the IAS Conference in Brazil to discuss how to accelerate progress. If our politicians are lacking this political will, we need to give it to them.  

Advocacy vital to get elimination of viral hepatitis back on track 

That is why advocacy is so important. It is the only way that we are going to get global elimination of viral hepatitis back on track. And even if it is not possible to get back on track immediately, at the very least we have to commit to stopping things getting worse, to reversing this increase in preventable deaths.  

Can we please just throw the lifebelt?