India's silent liver epidemic: The alarming shift from infectious diseases to lifestyle-driven liver damage that doctors can no longer ignore
Published on: June 30, 2026, 7:44 p.m. | Source: Times of India
A healthy liver rarely demands attention. It performs hundreds of tasks every day, from filtering toxins and processing nutrients to helping the body fight infections. Yet across India, millions of people may be living with liver damage without any warning signs.A routine health check-up often becomes the moment of discovery.Dr Chetan Kalal, DM Hepatology, Consultant Hepatologist and Liver Transplant Physician, recalls a patient who changed the way he thinks about modern liver disease."Not long ago, I sat across from a forty-three-year-old software engineer who had come to me for a routine checkup. He was slim by any standard measure, non-diabetic, a social drinker at most. His employer's annual health screen had flagged mildly elevated liver enzymes. A FibroScan told a different story: significant hepatic fibrosis, already established, silently."The patient had one question."But how? I don't drink. I'm not fat. I eat reasonably well."According to Dr Kalal, this is no longer an unusual story. It is becoming the face of liver disease in modern India.
