The Silent Pandemic: Tackling Hepatitis C with Policy Innovation

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Category: 2013

Published on Tuesday, 05 February 2013 08:18

The Silent Pandemic: Tackling Hepatitis C with Policy Innovation was developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit and investigates the challenges posed by the hepatitis C virus and how systemic policy innovation can minimise its impact. The report found:

• A need for better surveillance and epidemiology. As one official interviewed for this study noted, “we don’t have a real understanding of the magnitude” of the challenge HCV presents. Too few countries – developed or developing – have recently conducted the epidemiological studies necessary for good policymaking at a national, let alone a local level. According to the World Hepatitis Alliance, a patient group, within the European Union only the Netherlands has good data on hepatitis B and C, while in 16 EU countries the data are either poor or non-existent.

• Significant barriers to addressing the disease exist, including a lack of scientific knowledge, poor public awareness and delay of treatment owing to cost and side effects. Despite substantial scientific progress since the discovery of HCV in 1989 and the availability of increasingly effective treatments with improving cure rates, some basic elements of its biology remain a mystery, such as why some people develop end-stage conditions and others do not. At the same time, the public remains largely ill-informed about HCV: a survey by the European Liver Patients Association found that only 20% of those diagnosed had heard of hepatitis B or C before being told they had it.

• For too many developing countries, the healthcare system itself remains a leading vector of transmission for hepatitis C. In 2008 the WHO found that for those low-income countries where data are available, only 53% of blood was screened for the virus in a quality-assured manner, and that in 39 countries donated blood was not routinely screened at all.

• The high incidence and prevalence of HCV among injecting drug users in developed countries presents prevention and treatment problems and has stigmatised the disease and presents a series of related problems in addressing HCV.

• Facing up to the challenges posed by HCV requires a co-ordinated strategy covering a range of areas. HCV will not go away on its own. Countries which have had the most success so far have tended to focus on the problem in a co-ordinated way, rather than on one individual aspect. Each country will have different needs and resources, but all should consider obtaining strong data, raising awareness of the disease and focusing on prevention.

The launch of the report included presentations from Paul Kielstra from the Economist Intelligence Unit; Charles Gore, President of the World Hepatitis Alliance; Jack Wallace, Executive Member of the Coalition for the Eradication of Viral Hepatitis in Asia and the Pacific (CEVHAP) and Prof. David Goldberg, Head of Scottish Hepatitis C Programme. The report was supported by Janssen Pharmaceutica NV and its findings are based on extensive desk research and interviews conducted with leading global medical and policy experts.

To read the report click here

To watch the webcast click here

Remembering a Giant: R. Palmer Beasley

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Category: 2012

Published on Friday, 07 September 2012 03:06

Dr. R. Palmer Beasley's passing is a tremendous loss for the hepatitis community. He was a member of CEVHAP and Palmer and I were friends for nearly 40 years. I knew him very well, because he worked in Taiwan in 1970-80's and we both had a common interest in hepatitis research. He contributed a lot to our understanding of the epidemiology of hepatitis B, the etiologic role of hepatitis B virus (HBV) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and the immunoprophylaxis of HBV infection. His landmark discovery of "vertical" transmission of HBV from carrier mothers to their infants in early 1970's paved the road of hepatitis B vaccination. Indeed, he and colleagues went on to show the efficacy of hepatitis B immune globulin and hepatitis B vaccine in this setting, which laid the foundation of hepatitis B immunization in newborns. It is now a regular practice worldwide and this will avert millions of deaths due to end-stage liver disease and HCC.

Although the control of hepatitis B is on the right track, there are still many hurdles in its implementation. While CEVHAP is working toward the eradication of viral hepatitis in our region, we will all remember the giant who has contributed so much to what we are doing now.

D S Chen
Chair

An article in The New York Times:
R. Palmer Beasley, Expert on Hepatitis B, Dies at 76

Australian Specialist Develops New Tools for the Fight Against Hepatitis B

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Category: 2012

Published on Monday, 23 July 2012 03:06

Liverpool Hospital, Sydney NSW, at the launch of a set of innovative educational resources designed to improve the treatment rates of Australia’s approximately 170,000 hepatitis B sufferers and reduce the incidence of hepatitis B-related liver cancer and liver failure:

L to R:
Professor Stephen Locarnini, Director, World Health Organisation (WHO) Regional Reference Laboratory for Hepatitis B at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory; Dr Kerry Chant, Chief Health Officer, NSW; Dr Miriam Levy, Head of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at Liverpool Hospital in Sydney

For more details:
CEVHAP - NSW Health Joint Press Release, 23 July 2012

CEVHAP Policy Symposium at APASL

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Category: 2012

Published on Thursday, 17 May 2012 03:06

At the 22nd Conference of the Asian Pacific Association for the Study of the Liver (APASL) held in Taipei, on 19 February 2012, CEVHAP staged its first symposium entitled: “Better health through better public policies – What we can learn from the HIV experience.”
[Programme]

Keynote speaker, Dr David Thomas, of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the USA, presented some compelling data emphasising the comparatively large number of deaths occurring as a result of viral hepatitis infection as opposed to the small amount of funding received by the sector - from both public and private sources . The Symposium highlighted the need to build far better public awareness about viral hepatitis and also the need for adequate surveillance data, lacking in many countries, upon which to build and develop sound policy responses.

Some key media articles following the symposium:

Express Pharma (India) Online, 16-31 March 2012
CEVHAP hosts agenda-setting meet on hepatitis policy

South China Morning Post, 13 March 2012
Going viral; Break the silence; Lessons from an earlier battle

South China Morning Post, 21 February 2012
A silent killer remains at large