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PORT ANGELES — A deadly liver disease is being ignored despite its growing prevalence, a state epidemiologist told the Clallam County Board of Health last week.
Hepatitis C is on the rise on the North Olympic Peninsula and other regions across the country, said Dr. Scott Lindquist, state epidemiologist for communicable diseases with the state Department of Health.
“I don’t know of any other infectious disease that we ignore so completely as hepatitis C,” Lindquist told the health board Tuesday.
“There’s not a single case of Ebola that got ignored, right? There is not a single case of measles in Clallam County that would get ignored.
“But you have hundreds of hepatitis C cases up here [being] ignored.”
Lindquist said he is “turning up the heat” on hepatitis C.
He received a grant from the Association of State Territorial Health Officials to prepare a statewide epidemiology profile to “really describe the burden of hepatitis,” he said.