It”s almost dinner time, and Alan Wang and his family are busy in the kitchen of their Berkeley hills home fixing shrimp tacos.

While his wife, Jill Cunningham, sauts red peppers, Wang, a TV news reporter, shows his second son Ryan, 12, how to get the pit out of an avocado. Five-year-old Carly bounds in, talking about their pet chickens, then seeing if their dog Brahms will do tricks.

The couple don”t take this cozy weekday routine for granted. That”s because their family is affected by one of the world”s most prevalent but neglected, misunderstood and stigmatized global pandemics. Wang has hepatitis B, a viral infection that attacks the liver.

He is among 240 million people worldwide who are chronically infected. About 780,000 people a year die of complications, including cirrhosis and liver cancers, 80 percent of which are caused by the virus. To avoid being one of those statistics, he takes a daily pill to suppress the virus and submits to biannual blood and ultrasound tests.

“I don”t want for too much,” he says. “There are only a few things you”ve got: your health and your family and the love around you. I”ve really learned to appreciate that.”

Wang makes that statement in a new documentary, “Be About It,” which also focuses on another Asian-American father with hepatitis B. The film, which has been making the rounds of film festivals, including the Asian American Media Film Festival in San Francisco in March, aims “to break the silence” about a disease that disproportionately impacts people from East Asia and America”s Asians.

One in 10 Asian-Americans is chronically infected, and San Francisco has the highest rate of liver cancer in the world, according to figures from San Francisco Hep B Free.

There are several reasons hepatitis B is known as “the silent killer.” First, it often doesn”t produce symptoms in people for decades, so people aren”t aware they”ve got it until it has progressed significantly, says Huy Trinh, a San Jose hepatologist, or liver specialist. In the meantime, the disease progresses, and people transmit it unwittingly.

“The majority of patients are not aware they have the infection,” Trinh says. “Their perception is that they must have significant symptoms to have the virus.”

Shame and stigma also surround the disease. Among people of Asian descent, it”s often associated with drug use and risky behavior, says Wang, adding: “Asian people don”t like to talk about death.”

Among populations where hepatitis B is endemic, it”s most commonly spread from mother to child at birth, usually without the mother”s knowledge. That was the case with both Wang and A.J. Jabonero, the other father featured in the film.

Jabonero, a gregarious radiology technician with three young children, died in March 2015, three months after being diagnosed with liver cancer.

Both Wang and Jabonero also have siblings and other relatives with hepatitis B; Jabonero”s father died of liver cancer in 2005, and Wang had two uncles who died of liver-related illnesses.

For both Jabonero and Wang, a flare-up of jaundice alerted them and their families that they had the virus. Jabonero was 2 or 3 when he came down with a serious, flulike illness. Testing revealed that he, his parents and older sister were infected. This was in the 1980s, before the vaccine, developed in 1982 and now seen as a key way to prevent infection, was routinely given to newborns.

Shawne Lopes, Jabonero”s sister, adds that most primary care doctors back then knew little about the implications of the infection: how 90 percent of people who contract it before the age of 5 become chronically infected and at risk of developing deadly complications years later.

In Wang”s view, many in the medical community are still in the dark. His first flare-up, when he was a young reporter in the 1990s, led to his diagnosis, but the doctor just told him he would “eventually shake if off.” He also remained “stupid and ignorant” when he started dating Cunningham and infected her.

It turns out her hepatitis B infection was acute, which meant it made her very sick. But as with most people infected as adults, she quickly got over it and no longer carries the virus.

Still, after she and Wang married and started a family, she says, “we realized we had to get a handle on this.”

They knew any kids they had would be fine, especially with the vaccine, but she wanted Wang to get his infection under control. And he did, seeking out the care of hepatologists just as he would regularly consult a cardiologist if he had a heart condition.

Up until late 2014, Jabonero seemed to be doing amazingly well. He began to devote himself to eating well and competing in triathlons, especially after he became the father of his first two children, now 7 and 3, his wife, Melissa Jabonero, says.

Lopes, though, says her brother wasn”t consistent with his tests, perhaps because he was busy with work and family. He also wasn”t under the care of a hepatologist, as everyone with hepatitis B should be. With his challenging workouts, especially for his Team in Training races, he may have believed he didn”t need to worry about his liver. Everything changed when he went out for a long bike ride but came home to say he was having trouble breathing, says Melissa Jabonero, who was pregnant at the time.

Her husband died two months before their third child Shiloh, now 7 months, was born.

“I still feel like he”s just on vacation,” Melissa says. “I always talk to the kids about him, I try to keep his stuff around to remind them of him. Thank goodness for the kids; they definitely help me out.”

Lopes, now the mother of a 3-year-old son, says she”s diligent about keeping up with her tests. Fortunately, her viral load is low enough that she doesn”t need to take medication but, like Wang, she doesn”t take her health for granted.

Suspecting that better monitoring could have kept her father and brother alive longer has made her want to get the word out to others at risk.

“It”s not like we”re living in a Third World country,” Lopes says, “but the information isn”t being disseminated.”

Wang and Cunningham also want to point out that it”s no longer just an “Asian disease,” given how contemporary America is marked by increasing mixing of cultures through immigration, travel and marriage.

“There”s no shame in hepatitis B,” Cunningham notes.

Because of scarring in his liver from his previous flare-ups, Wang says he remains at risk of developing liver cancer. Still, with medication, the virus has been undetectable in his body for nearly a decade. “It”s easy to prevent,” Wang says, “and it”s totally treatable.”