Hepatitis Transmission

Approximately one in twenty people in North America will get infected with HBV at some time during their lives. Those who are at the greatest risk of being infected are the people who have unprotected sex, share needles, live in a house with someone who is infected, or work in jobs that expose them to bodily fluids like blood or saliva.

The virus is relatively tough and has been known to remain infectious after long periods of time outside of the body.  If an infected person spits on a surface and does not properly clean up, there will be infectious viral particles on the surface that can be picked up by the next person to touch that surface. This is one reason why people that live with HBV infected people are at risk of infection.

The first hepatitis B vaccine was actually a sample of heat-killed virus taken from an infected person and grown in a set of blood samples. Injecting the dead virus into an uninfected person's body causes the immune system to produce cells that target the virus and destroy it before it can cause damage. Newer vaccines are genetically engineered in laboratories and do not use any cells or virus particles from infected individuals.