LiverWELL

Amanda Li Hromin works as a community advocate supporting health promotion, community engagement, education programs and community awareness campaigns for the Victorian Chinese community in relation to viral hepatitis B and C prevention and related liver cancer prevention.

She was nominated by Hepatitis Victoria for the Council on the Ageing Senior Achiever Award 2019, for which she was the deserving recipient.

In this short podcast, Amanda talks about why she volunteers for Hepatitis Victoria and other organisations and what is the best way to communicate important health messages to the Chinese/Australian community.

This is the audio of the section in Hepatitis Victoria’s Annual General Meeting on 15th October, where the winners of the annual awards were announced.

Community Participation Coordinator, Steph Houghton read the nominations and Hepatitis Victoria president Frank Carlus announced the winners.

There were three nominations for the Organisation Collaboration Award, the Chinese Cancer and Chronic Illness Society of Victoria, IIbijerri Theatre Company and Forensicare, (the Victorian Institute of Forensic Mental Health).

Forensicare, received the award for its tireless work across the health sector making progress against the unacceptably high levels of hepatitis C inside.

There were three nominations for the Individual Contribution Award, Cr Lucinda Congreve, Mayor of Brimbank, Marion Lau and Sambath My, all of whom are already HEP Heroes, with Marion Lau receiving the award.

There were two nominees for the prestigious Mark Farmer Memorial Award for advocacy; Aboriginal elder, actor, musician, potter and activist Uncle Jack Charles and Councillor Youhorn Chea, the former Mayor of Dandenong.

Uncle Jack was this year’s winner in recognition of his advocacy for people living with hepatitis C, his passion and encouragement of people to be tested and seek treatment.

Lewis Stieven-Taylor is a La Trobe University student studying for a Bachelor of Health Science majoring in rehabilitation counselling. As part of his course, he is required to complete 80-120 hours of a work placement as an intern which he completed at Hepatitis Victoria focused on health promotion.

Lewis says his internship exceeded his expectations in many ways.

“For anyone with an interest in health promotion I would highly recommend they look into Hepatitis Victoria because it has been, at every step, fun engaging and extremely educational. I have come on leaps and bounds in my knowledge of health promotion and improved a lot of the related skills that come with it,” says Lewis.

“On top of that, the mentor-ship here from my supervisor Ali has been phenomenal, he has been at every stage, very open and aware of the tasks he is setting me, making sure I understand what is expected and always available for me to ask questions. He has also tailored the tasks to ensure they are beneficial for my future career, and also to a help achieve the academic aims of the university.”

Sidney Vo is appealing a Federal Government decision, based on her hepatitis B status, that means she and her 12-year-old son Billy have to leave Australia by the end of the month.

Her case has been widely publicised and by mid-September an online petition of support had received over 22,000 signatures.

Sidney’s experience has galvanised her to speak out. She signed up to become a Hepatitis Victoria HEPSpeaker and stepped out of training to record a short Hepatitis Victoria podcast.

Sidney speaks about her situation and in particular the unexpected stigma and discrimination she has experienced since going public.

“Its not fair for people like us to get discriminated against,” she says.

“We didn’t choose to have this disease -I call it an ailment- it’s not serious if we take care of it, and what we need is more people to take the test.”

Only 7% of people living with hepatitis B in Australia are getting treated while the other 93% of people “…are hiding maybe because of the stigma and discrimination, they don’t want to tell doctors they have hepatitis B.”

“I feel like a victim of old-fashioned guidelines…” Sidney says. “It's not only myself, after I went public I was contacted by people who are now overseas who say they had the same situation but left Australian with talking about it, maybe because of the stigma.

“If every chose to pack up and go who would be the one to stand up for us? I am doing this not just for myself but for the hepatitis B community.”

Health Promotion Project Officer, Isabelle Purcell was interviewed on 3CR Community Radio about the positive changes in migration rules for people living with viral hepatitis who want to apply for permanent residency in Australia.

She talks about what the changes mean and why they are an important change for anyone with a chronic condition.

Margaret Littlejohn is a medical scientist at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory, where she does research and diagnostic work into the hepatitis B virus.

Together with Associate Professor Steven Tong of the University of Melbourne and other colleagues, she recently published a fascinating paper entitled 'What hepatitis B tells us about the migration of ancient humans'.

The viral genetics of Hepatitis B is helping to trace the history and movement of Australia’s first people back at least 51,000 years

“We found the precursor of the modern HBV C4 -the strain of hepatitis B that is mostly found in Indigenous Australians- that virus entered Australia 51,000 years ago.

During the research “…we sequenced a lot of the viruses from different communities and what we noticed was this amazing geographical clustering…and from that work we did some computer analysis of the sequences that allowed us to date when the ancestor of that first virus would have arisen…and it allowed us to put forward a model of which direction it came into Australia,” she said.

“Hepatitis B has the characteristics of being an ancient human pathogen, it has a very long period of latency and then moves into chronic disease and causes problems when people are past reproductive age, so that allows the virus to be passed on even in small populations and presumably in hunter gatherer populations.”

Margaret says that endorsement for the research from the Indigenous community has been critical.

“(Our research) has raised the profile of hepatitis B in the communities, which is important because there are a lot of people out there who do not know they have either hepatitis B and C,” she said.

Kai Wen Cheong is a studying for his Master's in Social Work at the University of Melbourne and for the last three months he has been a Hepatitis Victoria intern.

In a short interview he speaks about his experience and what he has learnt.

"I feel blessed as I am literally enjoying every minute at Hepatitis Victoria... we are doing something really good for the community."

Kai's internship has provided him with many varied and surprising experiences, meeting people from all over Victoria and from all walks of life.

"One of my favourite quotes is from Mother Theresa, '...not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love..' The role of the intern of the intern or volunteer allows us to do something good for humanity," Kai says.

Every year the 28th July is World Hepatitis Day, when we remind ourselves that this preventable disease kills more than a million people globally every year, yet it can be managed and cured with more awareness, support and funding.

Even in Victoria over 70,000 people are unaware they are living with viral hepatitis.

On 25 July Hepatitis Victoria CEO Melanie Eagle spoke on ABC Radio's Overnight program to Trevor Chappell about what is viral hepatitis, why it is ignored and whywe need more awareness.

Helen Tran is a Hepatitis Victoria Project Officer working to raise awareness about hepatitis B in Victoria's Vietnamese community and encourage people to get blood tests, vaccinations and timely treatment.

"Liver cancer is very prevalent among Australian-Vietnamese and hepatitis is one of the main reasons," she says.

Helen has been speaking to groups such as the Vietnamese Arthritis Association, and she has been pleasantly surprised by the number of people who tell her after her session that they will get a blood test and vaccination.

"Presentations to community groups need to be made fun, no more than 20-30 minutes long and there should be ample time allowed for questions from the audience," she says.

In addition, the language barrier can be a big problem when speaking to communities.

"If they can't understand completely it can't help them take action," she says.

The Doherty Institute’s viral hepatitis National Mapping Report 2017 was published in April, providing an Australia-wide snapshot of prevalence, treatment and progress for hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and for liver cancer.

We talk to the author, Jennifer MacLachlan, Epidemiologist at the Doherty Institute who says the report reveals some surprises, but first explains the decision to combine what were previously separate reports on hepatitis B and C, and to add new data related to liver cancer.