Whereas Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and the incidence of liver disease caused by those viruses, have become urgent problems of a global proportion; Whereas the World Health Organization has identified viral hepatitis as an international public health challenge comparable to human immunodeficiency virus (in this preamble referred to as HIV ), tuberculosis, and malaria; Whereas, in 2016, the World Health Organization released a global health sector strategy on viral hepatitis that aims to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030; Whereas an estimated 240,000,000 individuals worldwide are chronically infected with Hepatitis B and an estimated 686,000 individuals worldwide die each year due to Hepatitis B; Whereas an estimated 150,000,000 individuals worldwide are chronically infected with Hepatitis C and an estimated 700,000 individuals worldwide die each year due to Hepatitis C-related liver disease; Whereas an estimated 1,000,000 individuals worldwide die each year due to liver failure or primary liver cancer resulting from a chronic infection of hepatitis; Whereas an estimated 5,300,000 individuals in the United States are infected with either Hepatitis B or Hepatitis C, including 1,400,000 individuals who are chronically infected with Hepatitis B and 2,700,000 individuals who are chronically infected with Hepatitis C; Whereas, in 2014, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that there were 19,200 new Hepatitis B infections and 30,500 new Hepatitis C infections, respectively, in the United States; Whereas, since 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found significant increases in the transmission of new hepatitis cases in the United States, including a 151-percent increase in new transmissions of Hepatitis C in the United States between 2010 and 2013; Whereas chronic viral hepatitis claims thousands of lives in the United States each year, and in 2014 alone, there were 19,659 deaths due to Hepatitis C in the United States