Mapping BC’s Core Hepatitis C Areas Improves Targeted Treatment

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“VANCOUVER – January 15, 2019. Mapping techniques for identifying ‘core areas’ for transmission of bacterial sexually transmitted diseases have now been applied to hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections by Canadian investigators, who anticipate this approach will facilitate HCV prevention and intervention programs.”

Lead author, Zahid Butt, MBBS, MSc, PhD, of the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia, and his team were able to use data from the BC Hepatitis Testers Cohort at the BC Centre for Disease Control to identify hepatitis C core areas and ‘outbreak clusters’ in urban and remote communities of British Columbia, and track them over time. The investigators claim this information can be used to identify gaps and guide interventions, to help determine the best “targets” for allocation of resources such as for medical testing and treatment, harm reduction and overdose prevention.