June 2025 Update
Greetings to our supporters, partners and friends. Our team continues to press ahead with established projects and new ones, despite challenges that are ever-present. We are always encouraged by your support, both financial and spiritual. The following is a short summary of our recent activities since the last report and some plans for the future.
The island country of Kiribati continues to be the site of our most active project. We have secured funding for another year of support from the Australian government and are applying for other grants from a variety of sources. Our community health worker program on the island of Kiritimati (Christmas Island) has been successful in improving adherence in at-risk populations such as pregnant women and cirrhotics, and we have hired an additional health care worker on South Tarawa to expand this innovation. We have submitted an abstract describing this program for presentation at a conference later this year. Our team will be traveling to Kiribati and Kiritimati in late June to provide patient care, training, and community health awareness.
Working in Papua New Guinea continues to be challenging. Drs. Lee and Hilmers travelled to Port Moresby in April. The major purpose of this trip was to evaluate the progress and needs in hepatitis prevention and treatment programs at Port Moresby General Hospital (PMGH). A secondary purpose was to meet with health officials in East New Britain. A number of meetings were held with key officials to fulfill these objectives. We will continue to support the work at the hepatitis clinic at PMGH and to pursue a collaboration in East New Britain. On a more promising note, we are re-vitalizing our hepatitis program in Oro Province and are planning a trip to this location later this year for the first time in several years.
Our program to provide birth dose hepatitis vaccinations and antenatal anti-viral treatment to prevent maternal to child transmission of hepatitis B in Madagascar is making slow but steady progress. We continue to work with our partners, Australian Doctors for Africa, towards elimination of hepatitis in Madagascar. We plan to send a team back to the country in 2026.
We are coordinating with national and regional leaders as well as international partners on hepatitis elimination projects in Mongolia, Tuvalu and Tonga. We continue to look for opportunities to share our experience and expand our outreach to regions of the world where hepatitis is highly prevalent and resources are few. Your support is invaluable in carrying our mission forward, and the Hepatitis B Free team is grateful for all that you do.
Sincerely,
David Hilmers
Chief Medical Officer
