IPM Take
The report’s strongest message is brutally practical: hepatitis is preventable and treatable, but millions of people are still invisible to the care pathway. Elimination will not be won mainly through better medicines. It will be won through testing, linkage to care, affordable treatment and national systems that can find people before cirrhosis or liver cancer appears. For IPM, viral hepatitis is a precision public health problem because the intervention exists, but the pathway fails before patients reach it.
Executive Summary
WHO’s Global Hepatitis Report 2026, published on 28 April 2026, provides an updated global assessment of hepatitis B and hepatitis C, which together account for more than 95 percent of viral hepatitis-related deaths. WHO states that viral hepatitis remains one of the leading infectious disease killers despite being preventable and treatable. The report documents progress between 2015 and 2024, but calls for renewed commitment and scaled-up prevention, diagnosis and treatment to close persistent gaps and meet the 2030 elimination targets.
Why it matters
- Policymakers: Need to make hepatitis testing and linkage to care routine, funded and measurable, not dependent on fragmented campaigns.
- Public authorities: Should strengthen birth-dose vaccination, harm reduction, testing, diagnosis, treatment access and follow-up systems.
- Patients / advocates: Can push for hepatitis to be treated as a solvable access failure, not an inevitable cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer.
Before the current elimination agenda, viral hepatitis was often managed late, when patients presented with advanced liver disease. Vaccination, antivirals and curative hepatitis C treatment changed the scientific picture, but not enough of the delivery picture.
What has changed in the 2026 report is the clearer focus on unfinished implementation. WHO recognises progress in reducing new hepatitis B infections and improving some service coverage, but stresses that diagnosis and treatment gaps remain critical. That means countries may have effective tools while still failing to identify and treat enough people.
The affected population includes people living with hepatitis B or C, especially those who are undiagnosed, untreated or facing cost and access barriers. The access problem is not one disease stage only. It starts with testing, continues through confirmation and linkage to care, and ends only when people can receive appropriate treatment and follow-up.
For IPM, the implementation message is direct: hepatitis elimination requires routine testing routes, community outreach, affordable diagnostics, treatment access and continuity of care. Without that, the world can have the tools for elimination and still miss the target.
