KOLKATA:Around 40 million people in India are infected with Hepatitis B and the risk of its transmission is hundred times more than that of the dreaded HIV, a gastroenterologist said here Tuesday.

"In our country it has been seen that there are around 40 million patients with Hepatitis B as compared to 2.5 million people with AIDS. Hepatitis B virus is 100 times more infectious than HIV," said Mahesh Goenka, director of Institute of Gastroenterology at Apollo Gleneagles Hospital.

"Hepatitis B is a blood borne disease which is more infectious than HIV virus. The best way to prevent this disease is awareness among the masses because this disease if detected can be cured in 80 percent of the cases," said Goenka at an interactive session organised by the hospital in the run-up to the World Hepatitis Day observed July 28.

Goenka said that chronically infected people were at high risk of death from cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer.