Hepatitis B website now in Mandarin

A European collaboration of patient advocacy bodies and clinicians, including one from Guy’s and St Thomas’, are launching a Mandarin version of the Hepatitis B patient information website they developed, www.pathb.com.

The resource provides information on how to monitor and manage Hepatitis B and has received over 19 million hits since launching the site in English last October.

“This virus is particularly common in the Chinese community as well as in several other ethnic groups,” says Dr Mark Wilkinson, a consultant gastroenterologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’, who helped to develop the site.

“The website is very useful for local patients, as 4-5% of the population in South East London have Hepatitis B. This is much greater than the rest of the UK, which has an incidence rate of 0.3-0.5%.”

By 28 July, World Hepatitis Day, the website will be available in ten different languages including Spanish, Russian and German.