In Hong Kong, where hepatitis B quietly inhabits the livers of one in twenty residents, a woman in her fifties has done what her mother and grandmother could not — she has outrun a family inheritance of silent disease and early death. Through decades of vigilance, interrupted briefly by a pandemic and nearly at great cost, she caught a tumor before it could speak in symptoms, and survived. Her story arrives on World Hepatitis Day as a reminder that the distance between a life saved and a life lost is often nothing more than a single, timely test.
Early screening breaks Hong Kong family's liver cancer cycle
Ms Lam's mother and grandmother died from late-stage liver cancer caused by undetected hepatitis B; early screening prevented similar outcome for the patient.