China has set up two clinics for young hepatitis B patients that provide better and more personal treatment schemes that fit their age.

"The aim of the clinics is to make sure every young hepatitis B patient will get the right anti-viral treatment," said Wang Menglan, deputy director of the domestic culture study association under the All China Women's Federation.

The two clinics, set up at the No. 302 Hospital of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Beijing-based People's University by the association and the China Hepatitis Prevention Foundation, will receive patients by appointment.

Doctor Wei Lai, from a hospital of Beijing University, said that student patients were often overlooked due to the heavy school work and parents’ ignorance of the disease.

Last month, 19 students who tested positive for hepatitis B in the city of Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang, were advised to leave school, for fear that they could spread the virus.

Hepatitis B is spread by contact with infected blood or through sex. It can survive only briefly outside the human body.

Hepatitis B affects more than 120 million Chinese and is considered a major threat to public health, according to the Ministry of Health.

Teenage patients are at the right age to receive anti-viral treatment because their immune systems are starting to recognize and fight the virus, said Zhang Hongfei, chief doctor at the infectious disease department at the PLA No. 302 Hospital.

The two clinics will catalog and analyze the hepatitis B and C viruses to provide references for pediatric hepatitis B vaccines in the future.

(Xinhua News Agency November 10, 2006)