Greece’s death rate from viral hepatitis has fallen 28 percent over the past decade, according to new figures released for World Hepatitis Day by Eurostat.
Viral hepatitis is a liver infection that can cause serious disease, including liver cancer, if left untreated. In Greece, the standardized death rate stood at 0.9 per 100,000 people in 2013. By 2023, it had dropped to 0.65. The rate peaked at 1.0 in 2014 before beginning its steady decline.
World Hepatitis Day 2026: How Greece compares with other European countries
Greece’s progress now puts the country almost exactly in line with the rest of the European Union. The EU average death rate from viral hepatitis stood at 0.64 per 100,000 people in 2023, just below Greece’s figure.
A decade earlier, the EU average was 1.53, meaning the bloc-wide rate has fallen by more than half since 2013, a steeper drop than Greece recorded over the same period.
The picture across Europe still varies widely. Italy recorded the highest death rate in the bloc in 2023, at 1.62 per 100,000 people. Latvia followed close behind at 1.54, and Austria came in third at 1.02. At the other end, Luxembourg reported no hepatitis deaths at all in 2023. Finland and Slovenia also posted some of the lowest rates, at 0.07 and 0.13.
World Hepatitis Day falls every year on July 28. Health officials use World Hepatitis Day to spotlight both Greece’s progress and the work that remains across the world. This year’s global theme, “Hepatitis: Let’s Break It Down,” calls for removing the barriers that keep people from testing, treatment and care.
Newborn vaccination gaps and Greece’s path forward
The disease still carries a heavy global toll. An estimated 287 million people were living with chronic hepatitis B or C in 2024, and the infection killed about 1.3 million people that year, according to campaign figures released for the day.
Only 45 percent of newborns received a hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth in 2024, leaving many children exposed to risk from the start of life.
Eurostat’s figures on viral hepatitis form part of a wider dataset tracking preventable disease deaths across the continent. Greece’s decade-long decline stands out as one of its more encouraging chapters.
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