LAUSR

www.jogh.org • doi: 10.7189/jogh.09.010310 1 June 2019 • Vol. 9 No. 1 • 010310 Hepatitis B virus (HBV) is currently estimated to be responsible for 290 million chronic infections globally, accounting for >800 000 deaths each year [1]. Infection is endemic among some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities, exemplified by many settings across the African subcontinent. International Sustainable Development Goals set out the challenge of combating viral hepatitis, with specific targets developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the elimination of these infections as a public health threat by the year 2030 [2]. For a crisis of such magnitude, with focused global targets now in place, we start from a position of surprising ignorance. A sustained lack of economic, scientific, clinical and political investment offer some explanation as to why HBV can aptly be considered a neglected tropical disease (NTD) [3]. The morbidity and mortality arising from HBV infection are predictable consequences of poverty, and we should be mindful of neglected peoples as much as of a neglected pathogen [4].