Global Experience
An interview with Amber Malik
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mber Malik has become the Principal Project Officer - Viral Hepatitis at SA Health, after joining the Communicable Disease Branch in May. She has a fascinating international healthcare background, and was kind enough to talk with us about her personal experiences and her thoughts on hepatitis elimination in Australia. You’ve worked on major health projects in Pakistan, Geneva, and Australia: what’s brought you to focus on viral hepatitis? As a public health professional, I understand that simple modifications in an individual’s behaviours and health practices can prevent the transmission of viral infections. In Pakistan I was managing integrated primary health care projects such as water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), mother, neonate, and child health care (MNCH), sexual and reproductive health care (SRH), and immunisation. It was complicated, working to eliminate and control communicable diseases in culturally and geographically diverse communities. Working with the UN and Red Cross in Pakistan and Geneva, I was supporting health systems in preventing communicable diseases as per the international
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standards. I supported government health facilities by establishing infection prevention and waste management systems, providing personal protective equipment (PPE), training, waste segregation, and correct disposal of equipment. I was also providing autoclaves for sterilisation and even funding the construction of waste incinerators.
health practices, where basic diagnostic and treatment facilities are available to everyone without any cultural, geographical, or socio-economic disparity. Now that I’ve had the opportunity to observe the best health practices around the world, I believe my knowledge will help eliminate viral hepatitis through various harm reduction strategies.
I was drawn to viral hepatitis, probably for the same reasons that any public health professional would be. The first reason is that, even though hepatitis is considered as the seventh leading cause of deaths worldwide, the epidemic was basically neglected until 2015, the year the global burden of disease figures were released.
What is the level of hepatitis awareness in Pakistan? Is there much government support for education, testing, and treatment?
I believe my specific background gives me an advantage because I have seen both sides of health practices and know how the lack of ownership of health professionals and government badly affects and contributes to the vicious cycle of infection transmission, even when awareness-raising and health promotion activities are being provided at a community level. I have always wanted to work with the world’s best
HEPATITIS SA COMMUNITY NEWS 94 • June 2022
In fact, the primary cause of viral hepatitis spreading so rapidly in the Pakistani population is a lack of education and awareness of the disease, as well as a shortage of medically qualified and scientifically trained health care workers, and an overall lack of health infrastructure. This has resulted in a decreased emphasis on screening, especially in the case of hepatitis C testing, since a person with a hepatitis C infection often appears and feels fine. Blood transfusion is still one of Pakistan’s leading causes of hepatitis C transmission. Even though hepatitis C virus detection is essential in blood screening, it is sometimes limited in
