The virus is a silent killer. Though 90 per cent of the carriers overcome the invader soon after infection, about 10 per cent of them, mostly infected during early childhood, become permanent homes. Once the virus tires the immune system into resignation, it hibernates for years and then suddenly fulminates into disaster. The victims feel forever fatigued and weak and suffer frequent attacks of jaundice, which eventually evolve into either liver failure or cancer.
So while an apathetic Government was taking it easy, the virus was stealthily spreading its evil empire. Over the last decade, the number of carriers have gone up by seven million. "Embarrassingly for us," says B.N. Tandon of AIIMS, "during the same period, many countries such as Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, China, Thailand and Malaysia launched concerted offensives with vaccines on this scourge. All of them have recorded impressive decline of infection as well as disease."