The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Liver Health recently issued an inquiry report on eliminating hepatitis C. The report has strongly emphasised that the National Health Service (NHS) England's goal of eliminating hepatitis C as a public health concern by 2030 will only be possible if the proportion of individuals diagnosed and initiated onto treatment is significantly increased. With this goal, the report has laid out several action-based recommendations:
- The report calls for a government-backed awareness campaign and awareness messaging targeted to both specific risk groups as well as individuals who may not consider themselves to be ‘at risk’.
- Improving the provision of needle and syringe programmes and protecting the funding for opioid substitution has been recommended.
- Routine testing in prisons, substance misuse services, and sexual health clinics are recommended, with ambitious targets for testing uptake.
- There is an urgent need for decreasing the time between diagnoses and initiation of therapy. This could be achieved by simplifying referral pathways and eliminating additional testing and unnecessary appointments.
- Treatment should be accessible to all individuals in community settings, including those who are reinfected. There is a call for adopting a target of at least 20,000 new treatment initiations each year.
- NHS England and the industry are in the process of negotiating funding agreement which will ensure equitable allocation of funds across different geographies and patient populations.
- It is crucial to improve the quality and type of data collected on hepatitis C epidemiology, which allows efficient allocation of resources and monitoring elimination progress.
The Hepatitis C Trust commented, "We hope that this report provides a blueprint for strategic and deliberate national action leading to an England where hepatitis C is no longer a public health concern."
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