Holden, Harvey Alter and all British scientist Charles Rice won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Medicine to discover hepatitis B treatment.
The Nobel Prize Committee said their discovery ultimately “save millions of lives.”
This virus is a common cause of liver cancer and the main reason why people need liver transplantation.
More than 300 million people suffer from chronic liver infections worldwide, and about 600,000 people die from acute or chronic complications of hepatitis B infection each year.
The highest prevalence of hepatitis C infection is in sub-Saharan Africa, where approximately 19 million Nigerians suffer from the disease.
Scientists say most people in these areas are infected during childhood, and 5-10% of the adult population are infected for a long time.
Please read also: Buhari approves N8-9B hazard pay for health workers
In the 1960s, people were very worried that receiving donated blood was developing chronic hepatitis (inflammation of the liver) from an unknown mysterious disease.
