May is Hepatitis Awareness Month. I am a founder and the current president of the Hepatitis Education Project, a nonprofit patient advocacy and education organization in Seattle. We work to spread the word about hepatitis virus infections, particularly hepatitis C, and to counsel patients and families about the resources available to them.

This year we have launched a public awareness campaign to alert folks to the presence and dangers of this disease. I am launching my own personal effort right here on Vashon, to alert my friends and neighbors.

Hepatitis C (HCV) is the most common infectious liver disease out there now, and the most deadly. Most of us probably know someone with hepatitis C — most people that I meet do. But you may not be aware of what a serious health threat this virus really is. Let’s compare it to HIV, a disease that you have probably heard a lot about.

There are an estimated 135,000 hepatitis C patients in Washington state, compared to about 12,000 HIV patients. Most hepatitis C patients remain undiagnosed. There are about 600 deaths a year in Washington from hepatitis C, versus about 90 from HIV. The deaths from HIV have been virtually constant over the past 15 years, but HCV deaths are doubling about every six years.

The public health budget for HCV is approximately 1 percent of that for HIV. Very little public health information or support is available for HCV, either nationally or statewide. Screening programs are small and restricted, and ignorance of the disease is widespread. It takes individual initiative to get screened, diagnosed and treated.

The good news is that hepatitis C is mostly curable. Current treatments have improved enormously and are about 70 percent effective on average, up to 90 percent in some cases. Even if treatment doesn’t work, there is much that can be done to slow and moderate the pace of the disease and keep the patient healthy.

But if you are not diagnosed, you can’t be treated and won’t make the changes necessary. I, myself, have been a hepatitis C patient for more than 45 years and have made many changes to my lifestyle that have worked to maintain my general health and hold off the progress of the disease.

Hepatitis C is heavily concentrated among baby boomers, those born between 1945 and 1965. A wave of infections went through this population in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, virtually unnoticed, because the virus was unknown and undetectable at that time, and it most often creates no symptoms until fairly substantial liver damage has occurred, often decades later. (According to the 2010 census, there are about 4,500 boomers on the Island; on that basis we would expect about 100 cases here, with most undiagnosed). Recent infections are down because the virus has now been identified and because of the universal precautions that are so much more common today.

Hepatitis C is an infectious disease, spread by blood-to-blood contact. It is not easy to get, requiring that infected blood be directly introduced into the bloodstream of the patient. Common infection routes are contaminated needles for injection, blood transfusions before 1992, unregulated tattoos and intranasal drug use with shared equipment. Substantially less likely are sexual transmission, mother-to-child transmission or sharing items like razors or toothbrushes.  Medical personnel and emergency services workers and veterans have gotten the disease also. However, because the virus causes no symptoms when it is acquired and may be diagnosed years later, many people are at a loss to explain how they got it. Casual contact, food, hugging, touching, etc., cannot spread the disease. There is no vaccine to protect the uninfected.

Our organization recommends that all baby boomers and anyone with any risk factors for the illness get screened. This month, Hepatitis Awareness Month, would be a good time to do it. Your doctor can provide a screening, or you can get a free confidential screening by calling our office at 723-0311 and making an appointment.

Thanks to the work of the pharmaceutical industry over the past 20 years, we are now close to being able to completely eradicate this illness. Your part in that effort is to get screened. The odds are about 50 to 1 that you don’t have this illness. But if you do, a simple screening can wind up saving your life.

— Steve Graham is a Vashon resident and retired computer manager from the University of Washington.