UK: NHS accused of delaying access to 'highly tolerable' hepatitis C drugs over cost concerns

The NHS has been accused by leading health charities of attempting to “severely limit” the introduction of new drugs to treat hepatitis C because they are too expensive – despite the cost of them being cleared by officials.

The organisations have called on the Health Secretary to intervene, saying that NHS England has made a series of “unprecedented requests” for patients’ access to new drugs to be delayed because of the price.

Yet Nice has approved the drugs as “cost-effective”, leading to a plea from 14 organisations and senior doctors including the Hepatitis C Trust, the National Aids Trust and The Haemophilia Society to Jeremy Hunt.

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Local woman sues Anthem Blue Cross for denying Hepatitis C drug

LOS ANGELES (KABC) --A Los Angeles woman is suing Anthem Blue Cross claiming the insurance company is denying her coverage for a Hepatitis C drug that could cure her.

Jane Blumenfeld said it has been 14 years of fear and uncertainty since she was diagnosed with Hepatitis C. She does not know when her health could take a turn for the worst.

It all started when she tried to donate blood.

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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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UK: NHS England sets up new £190m hep C fund

NHS England is stumping up £190m to pay for new hepatitis C treatments from AbbVie and Gilead that are yet to receive full funding from the country's health service.

 
The NHS's main commissioning body said that the existing budget for these drugs would be increased to £190m - up from the £40m budget that began last year.

This is the NHS's single largest investment in new treatments this year (except for the £280m Cancer Drugs Fund), but comes after a long delay for this extra funding stream.

The money will go to the roughly 3,500 hepatitis C patients in England and Wales with cirrhosis of the liver, and will gain access by the end of this year to AbbVie's Viekirax, a three-drug combination therapy for the disease, and Exviera (dasabuvir), as well as Gilead's hep C pills Sovaldi and Harvoni.

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Prisoners Sue Massachusetts for Withholding Hepatitis C Drugs

In the latest example of how the high price tags for hepatitis C drugs are limiting use in some of the most infected populations, two inmates in Massachusetts state prisons have filed a lawsuit accusing the state prison system of failing to provide the drugs to most infected prisoners.

More than 1,500 inmates in Massachusetts state prisons have hepatitis C, but only three are being treated for it, the lawsuit states, even though Gilead Sciences GILD +1.24% and AbbVie ABBV -0.29% introduced drugs since late 2013 that have higher cure rates and shorter treatment durations than older hepatitis C regimens.

“Prisoners who ought to receive the new medications are not receiving them, and a vast number of prisoners with Hepatitis C are not being afforded the necessary testing to determine whether they too should receive treatment,” according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Boston.

Lawyers from Prisoners’ Legal Services, a non-profit advocacy group, filed the lawsuit on behalf of inmates Emilian Paszko and Jeffrey Fowler. The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of other Massachusetts inmates infected with hepatitis C who have been denied treatment.

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The cost of curing hepatitis C

Eradicating hepatitis C
Gilead has said it would like to see the eradication of hepatitis C within 10 to 15 years and with the development of such a cure, experts say it is biologically feasible, at least in theory.

But in practice, many people don’t even know they are infected and more needs to be done to test for the virus and prevent transmission in the first place.

“This is a really historic point in time – any time you make such dramatic leaps in the effectiveness of treatment, it really raises the visibility of the problem,” said WHO’s Wiktor. “But we really need to scale up testing and get the whole health system trained on how to deliver these drugs, how to evaluate patients and how to use these drugs. That’s what we’re trying to work on, but a lot has to happen and it’s not just about reducing the price of the drugs.”

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Potential Liver Recipients May Have New Option

Organs harvested after cardiac death appear safe, effective, study says

FRIDAY, June 5, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Livers from donors who suffered cardiac death can be safely and effectively transplanted into patients dying of liver cancer, a new study suggests.

A liver transplant can cure many liver cancer patients, but many die waiting for a liver because most transplant centers use only livers from brain-dead donors. This study tested livers from both brain-dead donors and donors after cardiac death.

Cardiac death does not mean death from heart attack. Because of damaging oxygen loss, someone who dies from a heart attack is not considered a viable donor of organs for transplantation, the researchers said. Instead, cardiac death is controlled in a patient who will donate organs, they explained.

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