9. What is the burden of HBV and liver cancer in China?

Now it is not surprising that China has the greatest burden of liver cancer in the world because one-third of the population with chronic hepatitis B lives in China. One in ten Chinese have chronic hepatitis B. China, one country alone, accounts for fifty-five percent of the liver cancer deaths every year from liver cancer. In other words, every year about half-a-million people in China die from chronic hepatitis B and many die at the prime of life. This is not a cancer which often you know, like prostate cancer, affects people when they are very old. It tends to affect people actually between the age of thirty-five to sixty-five years of age. So in other words in China, every sixty seconds hepatitis B takes a life.