Would I know if I have hepatitis B?

Not necessarily. Although it is usually easy to diagnose an acute attack of hepatitis B -- because the patient is jaundiced, and his skin and the whites of his eyes have a yellowish tinge -- sometimes the symptoms are simply loss of appetite and tummy pain, which are difficult to distinguish from flu or a mild bout of food poisoning. Once you have had hepatitis B, you could become a chronic carrier of the virus with no symptoms at all (about 10 per cent of women who have had acute hepatitis B become carriers). In the Asia-Pacific region, carriers of Hepatitis B accounts for 5 per cent to 20 percent of the population. In Peninsular Malaysia, it is estimated that 3.5 percent of the general population are carriers.