MANILA, Philippines — Approximately 16 million Filipinos are unknowingly afflicted with hepatitis B, a deadly disease that usually progresses without symptoms and is often detected only during pre-employment medical examinations, doctors said Tuesday.

“You must remember this is the most productive phase of their lives…Some are not employed because employers think they might become a liability on the job due to the fear that they may become sick on the job,” Dr. Erlinda Valdellon, founding president of the Hepatology Society of the Philippines said in a briefing held on Roxas Boulevard in celebration of the World hepatitis day on July 28.

Valdellon said the Philippines is ‘hyperendemic’ for hepatitis B which means that the disease is highly prevalent in the country.

Valdellon cited the 2006 data from the Food and Nutrition Research Institute (FNRI) that pegged the number of Filipinos afflicted with Hepatitis B at 16 percent that roughly translates to 16 million Filipinos.

Dr. Judy Lao-Tan, Internal auditor of the hepatology society of the Philippines said almost half of the global population live in areas where the prevalence of Hepatitis B is high. There are at least two Billion people with evidence of hepatitis B.

“Half a million will eventually die of hepatitis B every year and two-thirds of these will not have symptoms. They will only be carriers,” she said.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hepatitis B is a viral infection that attacks the liver and is transmitted through contact with blood and other body fluids of an infected person. About 25 percent of adults become chronically infected during childhood and later die either from liver cancer or by scarring of the liver due to chronic infection. WHO experts said the hepatitis B virus is 50 to 100 times more infectious than HIV. It can cause chronic liver disease and puts the patient at high risk of death from cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver and liver cancer.