Among the 30 millions hepatitis B patients in China, 25 percent have experienced deception, and most of those individuals were cheated by a so-called "secret" prescription promoted over the internet as an ancestral remedy, according to the Yangcheng Evening News.

Professor Hou Jin from Guangzhou Nanfang Hospital said that most of patients had an urgent desire to be cured completely and quickly, which made them and their family easy prey for quacks and con artists who claimed they could clear the virus from patients' bodies.

A man surnamed Chen from Guangzhou suffered from hepatitis B for eight years and received treatment at China Air Force Hospital. He told the newspaper, "I spent over 100,000 yuan (US$14,900) on treatment, and over 80,000 yuan of that went into pockets of a quack from Henan Province who said he had a secret prescription that had cured many people. However, I remain a hepatitis B patient."

Because of the existence of 30 million hepatitis B patients, a huge medical market has formed in China along with a swarm of charlatans pretending to be doctors with obscure methods and mysterious healing skills to combat the virus, and they flood the internet with deceptive ads hoping to reap colossal profits.

While being interviewed by the Yangcheng Evening News, Professor Li Fushan, an expert of liver disease, said discrimination against hepatitis B patients provided those quacks opportunities to deceive.

An anonymous female patient from Jiangsu Province said her boyfriend refused to marry her because of her condition. Fear of discrimination led her to hide her disease and search for alternative treatments through the internet.

According to Li, the so called "secret" ancestral prescription didn't exist at all. "Blumberg was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1976 when he identified the hepatitis B surface antigen. That means the so-called ancestors couldn't have even known what hepatitis B was during their lives. So how could they cure it?"

Li believes medical professionals and leaders should help educate society about hepatitis B and work toward eliminating ignorance about the condition and discrimination against patients. In turn, that will make it more difficult for con artists to take advantage of them.