Providence Journal files / Connie Grosch Connie Grosch
MICHAEL FINE
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) -- Rhode Island's health department is encouraging baby boomers to get tested for Hepatitis C, saying adults born between 1945 and 1965 are five times more likely to contract the disease.
State health director Michael Fine says an estimated 11,000 Rhode Islanders have Hepatitis C, though many have yet to show symptoms.
The state says baby boomers are at risk because many are believed to have become infected in the 1970s and 1980s when rates of infection were highest. Some may have caught the disease from contaminated blood before modern blood screening techniques were widely available.
Sunday is National Hepatitis C Testing Day.
Fine says the chronic liver disease is treatable and that infection can be identified with a simple blood test.
The original version of this story misstated the year 1965 in the first paragraph.