by Charmaine Gauci

Infectious hepatitis and HIV constitute a major global health risk. At the moment it is estimated that 350 million people are infected chronically with Hepatitis B (HBV), around 170 million people are  chronically infected with Hepatitis C (HCV) and 33.3 million are living with HIV.  Malta, through the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Directorate, has joined an EU-funded project targeting these three infectious diseases. This project, named H-CUBE, aims to provide a strong basis for monitoring health determinants in STDs spreading. The general objectives of the project are to identify and disseminate good practices, contents and tools about Hepatitis B , Hepatitis C  and HIV training programmes and prevention campaigns. The aim is to help Public Administrations and NGOs in the EU, particularly in Italy, Romania, Greece, Slovenia, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Malta and Lithuania.

 

All information gathered is being used to organise, targeted training courses for health care personnel directly involved in the prevention, treatment and support services. Malta at present is conducting e-learning courses for healthcare workers and counsellors. Another target group is parents. This course will help parents become more aware on these specific infectious diseases issues and to be able to give detailed information to their children.

 

Additionally, prevention campaigns in many meeting venues for young people, the population most at risk of infection, will be organised in the participating countries. In Malta these were launched on the occasion of the first official WHO World Hepatitis Day on the 28th of July and will be ongoing throughout summer. This project is very useful for Malta. These three disease have been identified as priority diseases in an exercise done to identify priority infectious diseases in Malta and ties in well with the sexual health policy which the Ministry for Health, the Elderly and Community Care is fully committed to implement. More information on the project can be found at http://www.hcube-project.eu/