The virus is endemic across Asia, where up to 15 percent of the population is infected with the disease - which leads to cirrhosis, a hardening of the liver, and life-threatening liver cancer.
Asiahep will be working to pressure governments to allocate a bigger share of the health budget to tackle chronic hepatitis B.
About 1,500 patients were questioned in 10 Asian countries and territories, including Hong Kong and China, for the survey. Only 36 percent knew CHB could be contracted through the mother at birth and 27 percent knew it could be transmitted by unsafe sex. About 90 percent said they knew a "little or not very much" about CHB at the time of diagnosis.
Most patients felt CHB did not have much impact on their lives, reinforced by a lack of obvious symptoms - which doctors say could explain why they are not seeking treatment.
"Ignorance helps the transmission of the disease but, more importantly, the survey focuses on ignorance that results in patients giving up their chance of treatment or proper treatment," Asiahep founding chairwoman Dr Nancy Leung said.
"There's a misconception that it's not important to be treated because they don't have symptoms or because the treatment is expensive."
Education and public awareness campaigns have been recommended as part of the survey. In Hong Kong about 10 percent, or 700,000 of the adult population, have CHB. Of these, 23 percent have the active disease and their risks of developing liver cancer is 300 times higher than a normal person.
Less than 10 percent of patients in Hong Kong with chronic hepatitis B are being treated and only 20 percent of the population with CHB are being properly monitored.
Leung said Hong Kong was lagging behind in developing new CHB drugs and that it had not done enough to fight the infection.
Many of the patients in Hong Kong still wrongly believe that eating infected food is a leading cause of CHB.
The cost of treatment will be raised as a concern at the Asia Pacific Liver Association next month.
"We will address cost-effectiveness of different agents and look at the health-care dollars to see how we can pressure the government," Leung said.
She said the cost of treatment was taking it out of the reach of patients. "Governments have not seen the long term result in big numbers so they do not want to put in a lot of money."
Liver cancer is one of the top three causes of cancer deaths in most of the Asia Pacific region. At least 80 percent of liver cancer deaths are caused by CHB. Of 600,000 deaths caused by liver cancer each year, 380,000 occur in the mainland, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea alone.
For every 100,000 of the male population in Hong Kong, 38.9 die due to liver cancer, 90 percent of which have CHB. Men are six times more likely to suffer from the infection than women.
