九年有什么不同

这就是我在第五十届国际肝脏大会（ILC）的前进中一直在思考，该国际肝脏大会（ILC）从2016年4月13日开始，将11,000人带到了大规模的巴塞罗那会议中心进行了五天的科学课程和其他活动。

ILC，由欧洲肝脏研究协会(EASL), also took place in Barcelona nine years ago. No disrespect to EASL, but the lizard on the cover of the 2007 ILC programme got more play at the event that year than patient associations did.

When Barcelona hosted the ILC in 2007, the World Health Organization (WHO) sent me here as a staff representative – but I was not dispatched to the scientific gathering. Instead, I attended a small meeting of hepatitis patient representatives at a nearby hotel.

In the dark

WHO did not have a presence at the ILC in those days, nor did patient groups. This does not reflect on EASL, but rather on the state of viral hepatitis awareness in the larger world. It wasn’t just the general public that was in the dark – the global public health community was as well.

AsWorld Hepatitis AlliancePresident Charles Gore likes to point out, the World Health Organization had some 8,000 people in its global workforce at that time but not a single person whose job title included the word ‘hepatitis’.

查尔斯（Charles）在2007年参加了酒店会议，但他没有代表联盟 - 尚不存在。聚集的患者群体代表的目标是通过建立一个来提高对肝炎的认识的“简单”目标World Hepatitis Day.

Advancing beyond the national level

Yesterday, at the 2016 ILC, at a meeting chaired by the欧洲肝患者协会（EPLA）, we were charged with sharing insights about how to advance the response to the hepatitis C virus at the national level and beyond.

在世界卫生组织的大力支持下，许多政府启动了计划程序，许多政府已经引入了国家计划。

Charles Gore set the stage for the rest of us with a whirlwind account of what has changed since that 2007 meeting. Among other things, the World Health Assembly passed its first viral hepatitis resolution in 2010, and its second in 2014, both after intensive lobbying by advocates.

The first resolution established World Hepatitis Day, signaling the importance of this event and this group of diseases to governments. The second resolution called on governments to develop national hepatitis plans.

这些努力产生的一系列活动令人难以置信。在世界卫生组织的大力支持下，许多政府启动了计划程序，许多政府已经引入了国家计划。

我们这些研究和参与这些政策过程的人中，动力和乐观情绪越来越多，我们中的许多人都在巴塞罗那。和here at the ILCdiscussing policy and awareness issues – not in a hotel meeting room several kilometers away!

Hepatology, Medicine and Policy已经与Biomed Central一起推出。有关更多信息，请访问：www.hmap.biomedcentral.com.