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Tuesday 11 June 2013 –
Daily Update
– 5
‘Sixty per cent of people who inject drugs
worldwide are infected with hepatitis C –
it’s the silent epidemic,’ said Azzi
Momenghalibaf, chairing a session on
access to hepatitis C treatment, before
asking each of the five panellists to give a
snapshot of the situation in their country.
‘In Russia we have a very large number
of people infected – between 3m and 7m,’
said Sergey Golovin. ‘But these are
unofficial figures – we do not have a
national programme.’
Fewer than 1 per cent of people with
HCV in Russia were accessing treatment
and drugs were often left unused at
hospitals as people were not coming
forward.
‘We have highs and lows in Russia,’ he
said, the highs being prices, prevalence of
HCV and need for treatment, and the lows
being awareness, access and demand for
treatment. There were signs of activism for
a state-funded programme and pressure on
producers to lower prices: ‘There will be
action and protests,’ he said.
Amritananda Chakravorty spoke of the
long fight ahead for drug users in India,
where they were seen as criminals rather
than patients. ‘We need political commit-
ment at national and international level,’ she
said. ‘It is the ultimate obligation of the
international community to respect the right
to life of people who use drugs.’
Paisan Suwannawong outlined the scale
of the challenge
in Thailand,
where ‘the
government still
excludes people
who use drugs’.
‘We must
continue to
educate and
advocate for
people with
hepatitis C,’ he
said. ‘The most important thing is that we
continue to fight for decriminalisation of
people who use drugs and access to
healthcare.’
Dasha Ocheret of the Eurasian Harm
Reduction Network had been involved in
mapping data. ‘No one officially excludes
people who use drugs from treatment, but
there are huge gaps between official policies
and what actually happens,’ she said. If
people injected drugs in Russia, for example,
they would have a very low chance of
treatment, depending on their doctor.
With the absence of good national
guidelines in any country, a ‘recent wave of
activism’ was playing its part in raising the
profile of hep C treatment. In Ukraine the
government had reacted to pressure and
adopted a treatment programme, and in
Georgia civil actions and patient groups had
been successful in starting a hep C
programme in prisons.
‘We should never stop fighting for what’s
right,’ said Karyn Kaplan, who talked about
the new generation of hep C drugs – direct
acting anti-virus drugs without significant
side effects – that meant cure rates of up to
100 per cent. ‘We need to explore
compulsory licences for safe and effective
drugs,’ she said. ‘We need to make sure
they’re affordable.’
Calling for collective action, she added:
‘This is a matter of public health urgency,’
and encouraged delegates to sign an online
petition at www.hepcoalition.org.
Michel Kazatchkine joined the session
to give The Global Fund’s support in
advocating for hepatitis C and to launch
the Russian edition of
The Hidden Global
Hepatitis C Epidemic
.
‘Two thirds of people who use drugs
are affected by hepatitis C,’ he said. ‘It’s
treatable and curable but so few people
are accessing treatment.’
‘We need to
explore compul-
sory licences
for safe and
effective drugs... ’
KARYN KAPLAN
Former Swiss president Ruth Dreifuss,
former Polish premier Aleksander
Kwa
ś
niewski and Michel Kazatchkine
fromThe Global Fund discuss the need
to move to a public health approach to
tackling HIV and hepatitis C within the
Central and Eastern European region.
Governments within the region should
be working towards removing barriers
that stop access to clean needles
and substitute prescribing, said
Mr Kazatchkine.
Tackling the silent epidemic of hepatitis C