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Hepatitis

Global eradication of hepatitis B—feasible or fallacy?

Immunization against HBV has now been integrated into the WHO Expanded Programme on Immunization throughout the world. The reduction in chronic carriage rates in children from 10% to 0.9% over 25 years in Taiwan raises the exciting possibility that HBV could be targeted for eradication, but is vaccination alone sufficient to eliminate the infection?

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Figure 1: Global and regional HBV vaccine coverage rates.

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Correspondence to Mark Thursz.

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Thursz, M., Njie, R. & Lemoine, M. Global eradication of hepatitis B—feasible or fallacy?. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 9, 492–494 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2012.155

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