Hepatitis B, a relatively rare disease in the United States, is a "silent killer" of people of Asian descent, who are 20 to 30 times more likely to be infected than any other ethnic group.
Although they make up 3.6% of the U.S. population, Asians account for half of the nation's patients with the viral disease, which can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, liver cancer and death.
From 5% to 15% of people in U.S. Asian communities are infected, depending on the locale. A recent UC Irvine study of 828 Vietnamese people in Orange County who are 18 and older found that 13% had hepatitis B and 69% had been exposed to it.
"This is a silent epidemic and a silent killer in the Asian American community," said Dr. Samuel So, director of the Asian Liver Center and Liver Cancer Program at Stanford University.
Laws in 31 states now require that children be vaccinated for the disease when they enter middle school, but some people are asking why federal and local authorities aren't spending more money to warn older children and young adults -- particularly in Asian communities -- about the need to be tested and vaccinated.
"If you're a 17-year-old Vietnamese kid, you've probably slipped through without being immunized," said Steven McPhee, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco and principal investigator at the Vietnamese Health Promotion Project. "That's a population where they're beginning to get sexually active and have children. Then it's too late."
In Orange County's Little Saigon, home to the largest number of Vietnamese outside of their homeland, doctors and community activists say they hear the subject discussed on Vietnamese-language TV and radio. Vietnamese men have the highest rate of liver cancer in the world, much of it caused by hepatitis B, McPhee said.
But Diep Tran, program coordinator at the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance in Garden Grove, said she knows of no government outreach programs.
"There hasn't been a strong movement on that side," she said. "The community is aware of hepatitis B and liver cancer, but they don't know the extent of how the disease spreads, how you contract it or what the treatment is. There needs to be a lot more education, a lot more outreach."
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that hepatitis B and liver cancer account for the greatest health disparity between Asian and white Americans. CDC officials say their agency spends $250,000 a year on hepatitis B education.
