How Many People Die From Hepatitis Every Day
Viral hepatitis kills about 1.3 million people a year, roughly 3,500 a day, and the toll is rising. Hepatitis B and C by country, trend and cure.
Picture a man in his late forties in a city in Vietnam who goes to the doctor because he has lost weight and his belly feels swollen. He has never been seriously ill in his life. A scan shows a tumour in his liver, and the blood tests explain why: he has had hepatitis B since birth. His mother had it too, and passed it to him as he was born. For more than 40 years, the virus did its damage silently, without a single symptom, until it was too late to do much about it.
That is the defining feature of viral hepatitis. It is one of the deadliest infectious diseases in the world, and yet most of the people who have it do not know. It rarely makes headlines, because its victims die decades after infection, of cirrhosis or liver cancer, rather than in a dramatic outbreak.
The headline number
The World Health Organization's Global Hepatitis Report, published in 2024, estimated that viral hepatitis killed about 1.3 million people in 2022. That is roughly 3,500 deaths every day, about the same as tuberculosis, the world's deadliest single infectious agent. Those deaths are part of the roughly 62 million deaths a year that you can watch ticking upward on our live death counter.
| Time period | Viral hepatitis deaths (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Per second | 0.04 |
| Per minute | 2.5 |
| Per hour | 150 |
| Per day | 3,560 |
| Per week | 25,000 |
| Per month | 108,000 |
| Per year | 1,300,000 |
Two viruses do almost all of the killing. Hepatitis B caused about 83% of those deaths and hepatitis C about 17%. WHO also estimated that around 6,000 people are newly infected with hepatitis B or C every single day.
What hepatitis actually is
"Hepatitis" simply means inflammation of the liver. It can be caused by alcohol, fatty liver disease, some medicines and autoimmune conditions. But most hepatitis deaths are caused by five viruses, named with the letters A to E.
| Virus | How it spreads | Does it become chronic? | Deadliness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hepatitis A | Contaminated food and water | No | Rarely fatal |
| Hepatitis B | Blood, sex, mother to baby at birth | Yes, especially if caught as a baby | The biggest killer |
| Hepatitis C | Blood: unsafe injections, transfusions, drug use | Yes, in most adults infected | Major killer, but now curable |
| Hepatitis D | Only infects people who already have B | Yes | The most severe form |
| Hepatitis E | Contaminated water | Usually not | Dangerous in pregnancy |
Hepatitis A and E cause acute illness, often in outbreaks linked to unsafe water and poor sanitation, a story we cover in how many people die from diarrhoea every day. They make people very ill, but they usually clear on their own. Hepatitis B and C are different. They can settle in the liver for life, slowly scarring it over decades.
How hepatitis kills, slowly
The chronic forms of hepatitis do their damage quietly. Year after year, the immune system attacks infected liver cells and the liver repairs itself with scar tissue. Eventually, the scarring becomes cirrhosis, where the liver is so damaged it can no longer do its job. Cirrhosis also hugely raises the risk of liver cancer.
| Stage | Typical timescale | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Infection | Day zero | Often no symptoms at all |
| Chronic infection | Years to decades | Liver inflammation, usually silent |
| Fibrosis | 10 to 20 years or more | Scar tissue builds up |
| Cirrhosis | 20 to 30 years or more | The liver hardens and starts to fail |
| Liver cancer or liver failure | Often decades after infection | The cause of most hepatitis deaths |
Liver cancer is one of the deadliest cancers there is, killing around 750,000 people a year, and chronic hepatitis B and C are behind a large share of those cases. Our article on how many people die from liver disease every day explores the wider picture, including alcohol and fatty liver, and our cancer cause page shows where liver cancer sits among all cancers.
The age at which you catch hepatitis B matters enormously. Around 90% of babies infected at birth develop lifelong infection, compared with only about 5% of healthy adults. That is why mother-to-baby transmission drives so much of the global burden, and why the man in our opening story only found out in middle age.
Where hepatitis kills
The WHO report found that just ten countries account for around two thirds of the global hepatitis burden.
| Country | Main driver |
|---|---|
| China | The world's largest hepatitis B population, around 80 million people |
| India | Large numbers with both B and C |
| Indonesia | Widespread hepatitis B |
| Nigeria | High hepatitis B rates; low birth-dose vaccine coverage |
| Pakistan | The world's largest hepatitis C epidemic, linked to unsafe injections |
| Ethiopia | Hepatitis B, limited diagnosis |
| Bangladesh | Hepatitis B and C |
| Vietnam | Very high hepatitis B rates and liver cancer deaths |
| Philippines | Hepatitis B, limited treatment |
| Russia | Hepatitis C, linked to injecting drug use |
Regionally, the Western Pacific (including China and Southeast Asia) carries the largest number of people with chronic hepatitis B, while Africa accounts for a large share of new infections, because so few newborns there get the vaccine in their first day of life. You can explore the continental picture on our Asia and Africa region pages.
The rising toll
Here is what makes hepatitis stand out among infectious diseases. While deaths from HIV, malaria and tuberculosis have fallen in recent decades, hepatitis deaths have been going up.
| Year | Estimated viral hepatitis deaths |
|---|---|
| 2019 | ~1,100,000 |
| 2022 | ~1,300,000 |
Part of the reason is the slow nature of the disease. Many of the people dying today were infected decades ago, before vaccines and safe injection practices were widespread. As populations grow and age, more of those long-ago infections reach their deadly endpoint. The other reason is simpler: most people who need testing and treatment still are not getting it.
Most people do not know they have it
The numbers on diagnosis are startling. WHO estimates that about 254 million people live with chronic hepatitis B and about 50 million with chronic hepatitis C. Most of them have never been tested.
| Measure | Hepatitis B | Hepatitis C |
|---|---|---|
| People living with chronic infection | ~254 million | ~50 million |
| Share who have been diagnosed | ~13% | ~36% |
| Share who have received treatment | ~3% | ~20% |
| New infections per year | ~1.2 million | ~1 million |
Put another way, almost nine in ten people with hepatitis B do not know they have it. They cannot get treatment, they may pass it on, and the first sign of trouble may be cirrhosis or cancer.
The cure that already exists
The most hopeful fact about hepatitis is that both of the deadly forms can be stopped with tools we already have.
Hepatitis C is curable. Modern antiviral pills called direct-acting antivirals cure more than 95% of people in just 8 to 12 weeks, with few side effects. Generic versions have brought the cost of a full course down to well under $100 in many low and middle-income countries.
Hepatitis B is preventable. A safe, cheap vaccine has existed since the 1980s. Given within 24 hours of birth and followed by further doses, it protects babies for life. For people who already have chronic hepatitis B, daily antiviral pills cannot usually cure it, but they keep the virus suppressed and sharply reduce the risk of cirrhosis and cancer.
| Tool | What it does | Gap |
|---|---|---|
| Hepatitis B birth-dose vaccine | Prevents mother-to-baby infection | Only around half of newborns worldwide get it, far fewer in Africa |
| Hepatitis B infant vaccine series | Lifelong protection | Most countries now include it in routine schedules |
| Hepatitis B antiviral pills | Suppress the virus, protect the liver | Few people diagnosed, so few treated |
| Hepatitis C cure | Clears the virus in 8 to 12 weeks | Most people with hep C never tested |
| Safe injections and blood screening | Prevent new infections | Still lacking in some health systems |
| Harm reduction for people who inject drugs | Prevents spread through shared needles | Limited availability in many countries |
Egypt shows what is possible
Egypt once had one of the highest hepatitis C rates on earth. Mass treatment campaigns in the mid 20th century against a parasitic disease called schistosomiasis used reusable glass syringes, and they spread hepatitis C to millions of people without anyone realising.
From 2018, Egypt launched a national campaign that screened tens of millions of adults for hepatitis C and treated everyone who tested positive, using cheap locally made pills. In 2023, WHO recognised Egypt as the first country to reach "gold tier" status on its path to eliminating hepatitis C. It remains one of the largest public health campaigns ever carried out against a single disease.
The world has set itself a target of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030, which would mean cutting deaths by 65% compared with 2015. On current trends, most countries will miss it. Egypt shows that the goal is not a fantasy.
How hepatitis compares
| Cause | Approx. deaths per day |
|---|---|
| Pneumonia and lower respiratory infections | ~7,100 |
| Diarrhoeal diseases | ~4,100 |
| Viral hepatitis | ~3,560 |
| Tuberculosis | ~3,400 |
| HIV/AIDS | ~1,730 |
| Malaria | ~1,640 |
Viral hepatitis now kills about twice as many people as HIV, and around twice as many as malaria, yet it gets a fraction of the attention and funding. You can compare it with other causes using our compare causes tool, or see how the big infectious diseases are trending on our trending page.
Should you get tested?
Health services in many countries now recommend a one-off hepatitis test for people who may have been exposed. That includes anyone who:
- Was born in a country where hepatitis B or C is common
- Has ever injected drugs, even once, long ago
- Had a blood transfusion or medical procedure in a country without reliable screening
- Has a parent or partner with hepatitis B
- Is pregnant (most antenatal services test for hepatitis B routinely)
- Has had a tattoo or piercing with unsterile equipment
A simple blood test can tell you. If the result is positive, treatment can protect your liver for decades or, for hepatitis C, clear the virus altogether.
While you were reading this
You have spent about 12 minutes with this article. In that time, roughly 30 people have died of viral hepatitis, most of them from cirrhosis or liver cancer caused by hepatitis B. Many of them were infected as babies, decades ago, by a virus that a vaccine given on the day they were born would have stopped. Others had hepatitis C, a disease that a few weeks of tablets could have cured.
You can see where those deaths fit into the full global picture on our live death counter and on the deaths today page. To see how many hepatitis deaths have happened during your lifetime, try the since you were born tool.
Hepatitis is a slow disease, and that slowness is both its danger and its opportunity. The damage takes decades to build up, which means there are decades in which a test, a vaccine or a course of pills can stop it. The 3,500 deaths a day are not a sign that we lack the tools. They are a sign of how many people have never been offered them.
Data sources: World Health Organization Global Hepatitis Report 2024 and hepatitis B and C fact sheets, WHO announcement on Egypt's hepatitis C progress (2023), Global Cancer Observatory (GLOBOCAN) estimates for liver cancer, Global Burden of Disease Study (Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation). Figures are rounded and represent the most recent available estimates; daily and per-minute figures are derived from annual totals. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. If you think you may have been exposed to hepatitis, ask your doctor about testing.
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