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More people are on track to be cured of hepatitis C in Australia this year than over the past two decades combined, new research has shown.
A University of New South Wales Kirby Institute report shows about 230,000 people were living with hepatitis C across the country last year, but only one in five received treatment.
Hepatitis C is transferred by blood-to-blood contact and is often spread by sharing drug injecting equipment.
An oral anti-viral treatment, with a cure rate over 90 per cent, was listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) in March, and more than 26,000 people have accessed help since.
Professor Gregory Dore said the report results put Australia far ahead of other nations.
“There’s absolutely no doubt that Australia is the envy of the world,” he said.
“In the first five months of access … more than 10 per cent of the population with chronic hepatitis C has already commenced these therapies.
“If you compare that to many other countries in their first 12 months of treatment, if you can treat 5 or 7 per cent of the population in the first year of these therapies you’re thought to be doing pretty well.”
Disease on the rise in Aboriginal communities
For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders with hepatitis C, diagnoses have increased by over 40 per cent in the past five years.
Read more…http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-29/australia-leading-world-in-hepatitis-c-treatment/7887692