Does routine physical examination show no signs of hepatitis B?

The vast majority of regular basic packages for joining, enrolling, and group examinations in ordinary units do not include two and a half hepatitis B tests (that is, five hepatitis B tests).

The origin of this matter can be traced back to 2010. At that time, multiple national departments jointly issued regulations that explicitly prohibited unnecessary hepatitis B screening in employment, school and other scenarios. The core purpose was to eliminate hepatitis B discrimination - after all, hepatitis B is only transmitted through blood, mother-to-child, and unprotected sexual contact. People who eat together, shake hands, share office supplies, or even live together will not be infected. There is absolutely no need to set this project as a universal screening threshold card.

When I helped the company conduct annual employee physical examinations two years ago, I tentatively asked the doctor at the physical examination center if he could add this item to all employees in the company so that everyone could understand their physical condition. The doctor rejected it directly, saying that it was illegal for the unit to require a unified physical examination. There was an electronics factory in the next district that secretly included this item in the on-the-job physical examination. The employees reported it to the Health Commission, and they were fined more than 30,000 yuan and asked to publicly apologize.

Of course, this does not mean that ordinary people cannot check this item at all. If you are paying for a physical examination at your own expense, or if you have a hepatitis B virus carrier in your family, or you have had exposure risks such as unknown blood contact before, you can take the initiative to ask the physical examination center for additional items. It can be done for tens to a hundred yuan, and the results are kept confidential. No one can get it except you. Many of my friends have elders who are hepatitis B carriers. They take the initiative to add this item to their annual physical examination. They also check the hepatitis B antibody titer. If the antibody concentration is not enough, they can get vaccinated. It is more reassuring than a unified screening.

Nowadays, many practitioners in the public health field have asked whether this item can be put back into the optional list of basic physical examinations on the premise of complete voluntariness and strict confidentiality. After all, the number of hepatitis B virus carriers in my country is not small. Many people are infected without knowing it. By the time they are discovered, they have developed cirrhosis or even liver cancer, missing the best opportunity for intervention. However, this view is still in the discussion stage. Anti-discrimination is still the current core principle. This item should not be actively included in routine physical examination packages in the short term.