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“Effective April 2017, Alberta Health has agreed to pay for several new therapies for the treatment of hepatitis C, the most important of which is a medicine called Epclusa, which contains two anti-viral drugs,” said Stephen Shafran, a professor of medicine at the University of Alberta.
Epclusa, a drug for hep C with a near 100 per cent cure rate, is now going to be covered by Alberta Health.
“This should give people hope that they can be cured,” Shafran said. “The funding is a great announcement but there are still some restrictions on access because these therapies are relatively costly. At this time, we’re still not allowed to treat every person with hepatitis C but we’re able to treat a large number of them and we can certainly treat anybody who has evidence of moderate to severe liver damage.”
In Alberta there are about 24,000 people living with chronic hepatitis C. That number is above the national average.
The Alberta Drug Benefit List can be accessed at this link. See in particular page 149 https://www.ab.bluecross.ca/dbl/pdfs/dbl_full_list.pdf
Read more…http://globalnews.ca/news/3354273/alberta-expands-drug-coverage-for-hepatitis-c-patients/