One senator's push to fund hepatitis C treatment for veterans

Many veterans who fought to protect and defend our country are still fighting to get the support they need from the federal government. Fortunately, help may be on the way for veterans living with hepatitis C, one of the greatest threats facing former servicemen and women.

Recently, the Senate Appropriations Committee followed the lead of Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and approved a budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that included an additional $200 million to fund critical hepatitis C treatments for a total of more than $1.5 billion for hepatitis C over the next two years. The measure is now on its way to the full Senate for a final vote. This means that Kirk's pathway to securing these needed treatments for the veterans community may come in contact with federal budget cap debates and be blocked as the next federal fiscal year approaches. It will make a big difference if veterans of all generations contact their members of Congress to insist that veterans' healthcare priorities must be left untouched during spending debates. Veterans have sacrificed enough — especially those living with hepatitis C — than to have to stand by while Congress fights about the numbers.

While hepatitis C has reached epidemic levels nationwide, the veterans community has a hepatitis C infection rate that is nearly double the national average. For veterans, this deadly, blood-borne disease is a leading cause of liver failure, catastrophic liver damage and liver cancer. It impacts veterans disproportionately due to a variety of factors, including battlefield blood exposure, emergency transfusions and mandatory vaccinations in the era before hepatitis C testing became common.

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Area veteran can't get treatment for Hepatitis C

GREENCASTLE : Adam Shaffer, a disabled veteran with two tours in Iraq, discovered that the Department of Veterans Affairs has a cure for one of the things that ails him.

Only thing is: He can't get it.

"With Hepatitis C, the government doesn't have enough money to give veterans the pills," said the 30-year-old Shaffer. "They put you on a waiting list, and it's long. You can't get any treatment. It will kill you."

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Goodbye to the Boys on the Bus: How the VA Cured My Hepatitis C

They were a rough-looking crew, the boys on the bus. To be fair, practically no one looks great at 5:45 in the morning, the time you have to show up at the Veteran's Administration Outpatient Clinic in Redding to catch the van to Mather Medical Center in Sacramento. I say “boys” but occasionally a woman or two joined us, all of us veterans who for a variety of reasons choose the VA for our healthcare needs, even if it means occasionally riding the short bus 200 miles to see a specialist.

Most of us kept to ourselves, perhaps because the hour was early and talk would have inevitably turned to the illness that had earned each of us our seat. Cancer, lung disease and diabetes don't make for great breakfast conversation, especially if you happen to be suffering from one of those maladies and you're on the way to the doctor to find out how long you've got to live. Hepatitis C was my illness and I've never been keen to share that information with anyone. Our silence was stoic, not uncomfortable.

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The VA’s Hepatitis C Problem

Martin Dames is a highly decorated veteran of the Vietnam War. He received the Bronze Star for heroism in the combat zone and three Purple Hearts for injuries he suffered while fighting. He made it out alive, only to find out years later that those combat wounds got him infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), a deadly blood-borne pathogen discovered in 1989 that claims about 19,000 lives annually, a large number of them veterans. That number is growing every year.

A chronic infection in around 80 percent of cases, HCV often shows no signs of its corrosive presence until extensive liver scarring occurs after decades of infection. In some cases, the disease isn’t found until it has led to cirrhosis—advanced and potentially lethal amounts of scarring. Infection with the virus is a leading cause of liver cancer and transplants in the U.S.

Some 3.5 million Americans are infected, including an estimated 234,000 veterans. Approximately 174,000 veterans in government care have been diagnosed with hepatitis C, but an additional 50,000 are thought to carry the infection unbeknownst to them. For treatment, those veterans who know they are sick must go to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and its health care services extension: the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the largest provider of hepatitis C care in the nation. The VHA serves nearly 9 million patients at over 1,700 sites, but as Dames and many other veterans.

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Liver Fibrosis Starts Early After Hepatitis C Infection

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Adeel A. Butt, MD, MS, FACP, FIDSA
Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine and Clinical and Translational Science
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

MedicalResearch: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Dr. Butt: Studying clinical consequences of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is often limited by the lack of knowledge of actual time of infection. We used the Electronically Retrieved Cohort of HCV-Infected Veterans (ERCHIVES), a well-established national cohort of HCV infected veterans and corresponding HCV-uninfected controls, to identify patients with a known time frame for HCV infection. Our primary aim was to determine the rate of liver fibrosis progression among HCV-infected persons over time, with and to determine factors associated with development of cirrhosis and hepatic decompensation among these persons.


Among 1840 persons who were HCV+ and 1840 HCV− controls, we found that fibrosis progression started early after HCV infection tapered off after 5 years. After 10 years of follow-up, 18.4% of HCV+ and 6.1% of HCV- persons developed liver cirrhosis. Nine years after diagnosis of cirrhosis, only 1.8% of HCV+ and 0.3% of HCV- persons had developed hepatic decompensation.

MedicalResearch: What clinicians and should patients take away from your report?

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Lawmakers want investigation into VA’s botched treatment of Grand Junction veteran

DENVER — Rodger Holmes served his country in Vietnam.

After he came home to Grand Junction, his struggles with depression and alcoholism left him homeless but he entered treatment programs, worked his way back and spent the last years of his life serving his community, counseling other veterans facing demons he knew well.

He might still be doing so had the 64-year-old not gone to the VA Hospital in Grand Junction last summer to finally treat his Hepatitis C — had the hospital and the system of care he and veterans are supposedly entitled to not failed so spectacularly to serve him.

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