News & Events

"As part of the continued partnership with San Francisco Hep B Free and the San Francisco Giants in May, first baseman Travis Ishikawa, San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, San Francisco Hep B Free Co-Founder Janet Zola, and Saint Francis Memorial Hospital's Dr. Ming Tsang urged fans to ask their personal physicians to test them for hepatitis B. The plea was part of the pregame ceremony with Giants mascot Lou Seal on Friday, May 14." Travis Ishikawa made a plee to fans "to get tested and vaccinated."

"The San Francisco Hep B Free initiative is launching "Which One Deserves To Die?" an ad campaign alerting the Asian American community as May 2010 marks the 15th Anniversary of National Hepatitis B Awareness Month. One in ten Asian Americans is chronically infected with hepatitis B - the leading cause of liver cancer -- compared to 1 in 1,000 in the general population. According to the National Cancer Institute, San Francisco has the highest rate of liver cancer in the nation."

"The World Health Organization is being urged to step up the fight against viral hepatitis and develop a comprehensive approach to its prevention and treatment, with a resolution on the disease to be presented to the 63rd World Health Assembly later this month. This will be the first time that the assembly has considered viral hepatitis, despite the huge burden of disease worldwide, said Steven Wiersma, medical officer and hepatitis focal point at WHO's headquarters in Geneva. "One in 12 people in the world are chronically infected with hepatitis B [and] the burden is extraordinarily high, [...]

UCSF Medical Center's Liver Transplant Program exceeded all standards for adult transplants in an annual review by the Kaiser Permanente National Transplant Network. Outcomes data, including national benchmarks of the United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS), were used in the review. Dr. Ronald Potts, quality performance medical director at Kaiser, recognized UCSF for the "statistically high patient and graft survival outcomes."  UCSF outcomes for adults have been consistently higher than national averages. For example, liver transplant patients at UCSF Medical Center have a survival rate of 94 [...]

"Subaru of America has donated a 2010 Subaru Legacy Sedan to the San Francisco Hepatitis B Free campaign in the fight against hepatitis B disease among the Asian American community. The first partnership of its kind, the "Hep B Hero Mobile" Legacy Sedan promotes the campaign theme which calls on everyone to "B a Hero" in preventing liver cancer and hepatitis B with a traveling road show throughout the Bay Area and a social media campaign that will outreach to Asian Americans nationwide."

"In her first public appearance since the health care reform bill rollout last Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi addressed the need for community-based health care reform in a press conference at the Chinese Hospital on Oct. 31, highlighting the San Francisco Hep B Free campaign as a model for the nation. With one in ten Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) chronically infected with the hepatitis B virus, Hep B Free is a citywide campaign to turn San Francisco into the nation's first city free of the disease."

UCSF News reports on the the difficult choices that patients, families and doctors face because of the shortage of donated organs for transplantation. A difficult conundrum for the nation's transplant patients was aired September 22 when the news program California Connected featured UCSF's Liver Transplant Program. The story, produced by Jon Dann for public television stations KQED and KCET, highlights the difficult choices that patients, families and doctors face because of the shortage of donated organs for transplantation. Reporter Bob Jimenez pointed out that this shortage in one [...]

UCSF Medical Center staff performed the biopsy and told us the next day that William had a condition called biliary atresia, which is the closure or absence of some or all of the major bile ducts. That evening William had surgery to assess the damage to his liver and to open bile ducts. Later, during clinic visits with Dr. Phil Rosenthal (pictured left) and pediatric nurse practitioner and Liver Transplant Coordinator Chris Mudge, we learned about a relatively new procedure call a living related liver transplant. To us, this procedure offered the best hope.

"The next day, surgeons at the University of California at San Francisco performed a rare liver transplant called a ``domino transplant,'' the first in the Bay Area and one of just a handful done in the United States. ........................Her choice was to have a liver that will give her a disease in 30 years, or die of cancer in the next year,'' said Dr. Ryutaro Hirose (pictured left), the surgeon for both transplants. ``She jumped at the chance, and most people would.''