Australia: Hepatitis C drug buyers club aims to set up new source of support

 "The FixHepC Buyers Club has successfully helped patients with a doctor's prescription to arrange personal importation and testing of a course of the drugs for a fraction of the US cost - between $US930 ($A1292) and $US1980 ($A2795). The cure rates from these generic medications have reportedly been excellent with results posted on the fixhepc.com website."

A group of campaigning patients and doctors has launched a Dallas Buyers' Club-style operation to help Australia's estimated 233,000 hepatitis C sufferers get new life-saving drugs without paying astronomical bills.

The move comes after the Kirby Institute for infection and immunity in society published a report showing the number of Australians with hep-C related severe liver disease has more than doubled in 10 years.

The FixHepC Buyers Club has been set up to import new wonder drugs such as Harvoni  and Sovaldi from China, instead of waiting for Gilead Sciences, the American pharmaceutical giant which owns the patents, to negotiate a price with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/hepatitis-c-drug-buyers-club-aims-to-set-up-new-source-of-support-20150924-gjts1t.html#ixzz3mnntLHL7

Australia: Region has third highest hepatitis C numbers in NSW

"Only an estimated 1.7% of the population living with the blood-borne virus have accessed treatment."

THE Northern Rivers continues to have one of the highest number of hepatitis C cases in the state with 233 new notifications last year.

Figures from the NSW Hepatitis B and C Strategies 2014 annual data report rank the Northern NSW Local Health District third in the state with 79 hepatitis C notifications per 100,000 people.

Northern NSW Local Health District HIV and related programs manager Jenny Heslop said most of the 233 people notified had likely been living with hepatitis C for many years.

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Australia: Senator Ian Macdonald on mission to remove hepatitis C stigma

EXCLUSIVE: Conservative Queensland Senator Ian Macdonald and his nephew are on a mission to tackle the stigma around hepatitis C and help improve access to life-saving treatments.

Senator Macdonald’s nephew Ian Pengelly, 44, was born with a form of haemophilia and contracted the potentially-deadly hepatitis C virus as a young teenager from the unscreened blood-clotting factor he was given as a part of his treatment during the 1980s.

This week, with the support of his uncle, Mr Pengelly is speaking publicly about his battle with the disease for the first time, and will detail his journey in a new book to be launched by Hepatitis Australia in Parliament House on Tuesday.

Around 230,000 Australians are believed to be living with chronic hepatitis C, a blood-borne virus which affects the liver and kills around 600 people each year.

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Australia: Lives Could Be Saved with New Hepatitis C Therapy

In a letter to the Medical Journal of Australia, a Monash University-led team is asking for hepatitis C virus patients to gain improved access to drugs to prevent liver related deaths.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is a major public health burden in Australia, with estimates of 230,000 people chronically infected.

The research team are calling for the government to subsidize a new therapy which has high cure rates, known as direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapy.

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Australia: 'Like night and day' – calls for federal government to approve new Hep C drugs

Advocates in Canberra have called on the government to urgently subsidise new, advanced treatments for hepatitis C, saying each month they delay about 50 people die from the condition.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee recommended on April 24 that three new antiviral medications, designed to treat hepatitis C, be considered for addition to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy manager Sione Crawford, who lives with hepatitis C, said the difference between the new and old drugs was like "night and day".

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Australia: World first trials for hepatitis C wonder drug in Sydney's maximum security jails

Two of NSW's maximum security jails are the location for a world-first trial of a new wonder drug that could stop the spread of the blood-borne disease hepatitis C through the prison populations.

Prisoners at the Lithgow and Goulburn jails are being recruited to take part in the treatment program, which it is hoped will eventually rid the institutions of the disease and potentially save the lives of thousands suffering chronic infections.

About a third of all prisoners in NSW jails are infected with chronic hepatitis C, which spreads rapidly through prisons by blood-to-blood contact including sharing of needles, syringes and other drug paraphernalia, tattoo equipment and from fights.

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Australia: Prisons breeding ground for Hep C

Australian jails are a potential breeding ground for Hepatitis C, a former prison officer has told a Senate inquiry.

Ross Hannah says Australia could be gearing up for a tidal wave of liver transplants if more effort isn't put into preventing illicit drugs and syringes entering jails.

Mr Hannah said needle stick injuries were a growing threat to prison guards during cell searches.

Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/03/20/10/24/prisons-breeding-ground-for-hep-c-guard#JPfueRARkZuckYLt.99

Australia: More Australians with Hepatitis C hope new drugs will be approved by Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme

Nearly 250,000 Australians with Hepatitis C hope new drugs will be approved by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). 

Current medication can require 6-12 months of treatment and for many patients causes debilitating side effects like nausea, hair loss and depression.

Hepatitis Queensland spokeswoman Jodie Walton said while the available drugs had an 80 per cent cure rate, the emotional and physical cost was often too high.

She said the stigma associated with Hepatitis C meant many sufferers were reluctant to tell their family or work colleagues they were infected.

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Australia: Calls for clean needles in West Australian prisons as one in ten inmates test positive for Hepatitis C

BRENDAN TREMBATH: Tests reveal that one in ten inmates in the Western Australia prison system have the infectious disease Hepatitis C.

But a support group says efforts to reduce its prevalence are doomed to fail unless prisoners are given access to clean needles.

Hepatitis WA has renewed calls for the State Government to introduce a needle exchange program.

Read more and listen to the podcast here....

Sydney-Benitec Biopharma Doses Fourth Patient In Hepatitis C Trial

Benitec Biopharma (ASX: BLT; OTCPK: BTEBY), a biopharmaceutical company focused on providing potentially curative therapies with its proprietary gene-silencing technology called ddRNAi or "expressed RNAi," today announced that the fourth patient in the company's Phase I/IIa dose escalation clinical trial of its lead program TT-034 for treating hepatitis C was dosed at the Duke Clinical Research Unit.  This is the second patient to be dosed in Cohort Two, with the third and final patient in Cohort Two well advanced in their preparation for dosing. 

As previously announced, the parallel dosing of these patients follows a positive recommendation from the DSMB's review of the safety data from the first patient in this cohort.

All three patients in Cohort Two receive a dose of 1.25 x 10^11 vg/kg of TT-034, a concentration that is a half-log higher than the dose administered in Cohort One.  This dose level is still below the concentration expected to inhibit hepatitis C viral replication and therefore data from Cohort Two are expected to serve primarily as a further safety assessment.

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Australia: 5 Facts About Liver Cancer, Australia’s Deadliest

Liver cancer, the growth of tumors in the liver, is among the common cancers with over 700,000 new cases reported in one year alone. The major reason for the incidence of this dreadful cancer is identified as liver infection of Hepatitis B or C virus. A scary finding by Hepatitis Australia shows that for every person dying of liver cancer in Australia, there is a new person diagnosed with the disease. With cases that lead to death increasing in an alarming rate, medical world is taking more efforts to tackle this disease. Here is a look at some of the facts about liver cancer.

Prevalence is more among men and old people: Liver cancer is observed to be more prevalent in men than in women, and it tends to be found more in old people. More than 80% of all reported liver cancer cases are in developing countries in Asia and Africa.

One of the major causes is Hepatitis infection: Cirrhosis, where scar tissues replace healthy tissues in the liver, is considered as one of the major causes of liver cancer. This is brought about by chronic alcohol use, persistent viral infections, and certain auto immune diseases. Long term hepatitis B infection (often undetected) is cited as a major cause of cirrhosis by experts. A lot of liver cancer cases are due to smoking, diabetes and obesity.  Exposure to aflatoxins, arsenic, vinyl chloride, etc are also considered as potent causes for the disease.

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Australia: Aboriginal Hepatitis C rising, prompting calls for improved services

As rates of the disease decrease among Australians overall, Hepatitis C is three times higher and rising in Indigenous populations.

Mainstream medical services are failing Aboriginal communities, where the rate of Hepatitis C is rising, a peak Aboriginal health body has told a federal Senate inquiry.

A public hearing in Sydney on Thursday heard submissions from stakeholders, including the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (Naccho), which called for improved access and funding of medical services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

As rates of the disease decrease among Australians overall, Hepatitis C is three times higher and rising in Indigenous populations, according to a 2013 study by the Kirby Institute. The worsening problem is mainly due to higher rates of unsafe drug injecting and possibly higher rates of incarceration, where the prevalence of intravenous drug use is much higher among Indigenous prisoners, according to multiple studies.

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Australia: The miracle cure with a billion-dollar price tag

It's been hailed as a miracle cure for hepatitis C – but comes with a billion-dollar price tag.

The Commonwealth government is under pressure to subsidise Sovaldi, produced by drug company Gilead, that has been approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration but has been rejected for listing on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme on value-for-money grounds.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, the independent expert body that decides which drugs should be subsidised, will consider a second application to list the drug at its March meeting, along with applications to list three other new hepatitis treatments.

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