Canada: Sydney advocate praises N.S. coverage of hep C drugs

SYDNEY — A Cape Breton health-care advocate is welcoming the province’s decision to cover a new line of hepatitis C drugs.

Christine Porter, who runs the Ally Centre of Cape Breton in Sydney, said any move to lower prescription drug costs for the marginalized is a step in the right direction.

She said the island is home to the highest per capita rates of the disease in both the province and the country.

“It’s a great thing when the government covers medications for any disease, especially with hepatitis C; the cost is exorbitant unless you have a really, really good medical plan,” said Porter.

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Canada: Ontario approves second costly drug for hepatitis C

With provincial approval of a second costly drug that can cure hepatitis C, Ottawa liver specialist Dr. Curtis Cooper is now expecting to see thousands of his patients cured of the disease that, without treatment, had the potential to destroy their lives.

The Ontario government agreed this week to pay for the drug Holkira Pak which, pharmaceutical company AbbVie says had a 97 per cent cure rate in genotype 1 hepatitis C patients during clinical trials. It is the second hepatitis C drug the province has approved this year under the Ontario Drug Benefit exceptional access program. Earlier,the province agreed to pay for the drug Harvoni, which has a similar high cure rate for hepatitis C.

Both drugs cost in the $50,000 to $60,000 range, or more, which, until the province approved them, meant they were out of reach to most patients. Unlike previous treatments for hepatitis C, the drugs are easy to take in daily pill form, are well tolerated by patients and cure the disease in the vast majority of cases.

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Canada: Hepatitis C treatments are 'history in the making' at a high cost

BillyBob McPherson lived on Ottawa’s streets as a young teenager before “running away with the carnival.” The 55-year-old doesn’t know exactly when during his colourful life he contracted hepatitis C — he thinks it might have been in Texas in the 1980s where he had surgery and blood transfusions while working as a carny.

But without treatment, he believes, the disease would have ended his life.

Today, he is disease free, a living testament to the wonders of new drugs developed to cure the liver disease with few or no side effects. But he is also an example of the painful realities of the new treatments.

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