HEPATITIS B: A SILENT KILLER

  The liver filters poisons from the blood and performs at least other important functions. That is why hepatitis inflammation of the liver can devastate a person’s health. Hepatitis may result from excessive alcohol consumption or exposure to toxins. Most often, though, viruses are the culprit. Scientists have identified five such viruses and believe that there are at least three more.

  Five viruses are known to cause hepatitis, the three most common being designated A, B, and C. Other viruses are also suspected. The symptoms of all forms of hepatitis can be flu like and may or may not include Jaundice. Many people particularly children, have no symptoms. With hepatitis B and hepatitis C, the liver may already be several damaged by the time symptoms appear.

  Just one of the five hepatitis B and virus (HBV)-kills at least 600,000 people a year, compared to the toll of taken by malaria. More than two billion people nearly one third of the world’s population have been infected with HBV, and most recovered within months. For about 350 millions, however the disease became chronic for the rest of their lives, whether they have symptoms or not, they will have the potential to infect others.

  Proper medical care, started early, can help some with chronic HBV to ward off serious liver damage, but more are unaware that they have been infected, as only a specific blood test can detect HBV. Even routine liver function test may come back normal. Thus, HBV can be a silent killer, striking without warning. Obvious symptoms may not appear until after infection. By then, either cirrhosis or cancer of the liver may be developed. These diseases take the life of 1 in 4 HBV carriers.

 

 

I HAVE A DREAM

Whenever we talk about dreams, what readily come to our mind are the things we experience while asleep. What we have to consider today, however, transcends the vision of the night. It is a vision of the future; a desire, an ambition, a projection and a purpose. It has nothing to do with fantasy or wishful thinking; it is a purpose which stretches and propels into action.

  We experience our full human potentials when we embrace and pursue such dreams. Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision, the people perish”. A man/woman without vision is dead and only waiting for the grave; indeed must be a goal that you desire to attain in life.

  Do you realize that the great achievements that we see all around us today are not mere accidental occurrences? They are but dividends of great dreams and purposeful living. The creation of our World was the product of God’s dreams. The redemption of mankind from the pangs of sin and hell was the products of Christ’s purpose and dream. People like Joseph, the beloved son of Jacob, nurtured the dream of greatness and consequently became the prime minister of Egypt in his days. History also recorded that Abraham Lincoln, after several failures, got to White House as America’s President because his dreams neither died nor waned through the pressure of disappointment.

  Indeed, your dream determines your place, molds your destiny and makes your future. If your dream is small, then you are small, if your dream is mediocrity, then you are mediocre, if your dream is supernatural, then you are supernatural.

  What then is your vision as a man/woman? Do you aim at being a man/woman of nothingness or of greatness? Do you even have a dream at all?