2. What is the global impact of HBV infection?

So the first thing I’d like to get across is what is the global problem? The global problem is that there are at least 350 million people in the world chronically infected with hepatitis B virus and that’s somewhere around six percent of the world’s population. So we’re talking about a major illness. It’s been estimated by the World Health Organization that about one million people out of these 350 million people will die each year of either of HCC as a kind of cellular carcinoma or liver cancer or chronic liver disease. And of these 350 million, if we didn’t add any new carriers to the population, any new chronically infected people, which we’re doing every day, sixty million would eventually die. Just to put sixty million in perspective, that’s more than died in all of World War II. So, we’re talking big numbers and a lot of tragedy.