LAHORE, April 21: Federal Health Secretary Tariq Farooq said on Wednesday that a preventive programme to control hepatitis B and C in rural areas would be launched as soon as the network of Lady Health Workers got the ability to covered the entire population.

He was talking to newsmen after a seminar on 'Natural history, diagnosis and management of chronic hepatitis B and C' organized by the gastroenterology and hepatology department of Shaikh Zayed Medical Complex.

The secretary said that the network of Lady Health Workers was currently covering 70 per cent of the population. Answering a question, he said that besides carrying out routine surveillance the National Institute of Health was conducting a special survey to determine causes of the incidence of hepatitis B and C cases in the country.

He hoped that the NIH would formulate its report in a month.

APP adds: Speaking at the seminar earlier, the health secretary said that 4.9 million people in Pakistan were carriers of hepatitis B or C. He said the government had included hepatitis in its vaccination programme and added that children up to one year of age would be given free vaccine to protect them against the disease.