HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — West Virginia’s first-of-its-kind syringe exchange program will launch Wednesday in Huntington and Cabell County.
“The community has recognized a need and demand of this service for some time and we’re just excited to be able to offer it,” said Michael Kilkenny, the physician director for the Cabell-Huntington Health Department.
The pilot project will involve education and treatment resources to make clean needles more readily available. There will also be efforts to stop the spread of infectious diseases, like hepatitis B and hepatitis C, by giving addicts points of contact within the health department.
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Tuesday, September 1, 2015
Consumer Reports Best Buy Drugs Booklet —Alan Franciscus, Editor-in-Chief
Coincidently, today I received a booklet in the mail from Needymeds.org titled “Consumer Reports Best Drugs for Less.” This little book is chock full of information about saving people money on drugs, gives examples of how much money you can save, provides information on the best choices on different medications, what drugs are safe split in half (and medications that should not be broken in half), generic drugs, reading drug labels, understanding drugstore services and much more health advice.
The booklet is free! It can be viewed and downloaded in English and Spanish at CRBestbuydrugs.org
New hep C campaign to target boomers, IV drug users
A new state-run campaign will heavily push screening for hepatitis C among baby boomers and intravenous drug users.
Set to launch in mid-October, the Delaware Division of Public Health program aims to reach out to health care providers, especially primary care doctors and substance abuse clinicians, to educate them on whom to screen and how the disease is transmitted.
A story in The News Journal this month detailed how the state’s wave of heroin addiction is driving an explosion of hepatitis C cases among intravenous drug users and the barriers they face to get expensive medication.
Read more.....
Set to launch in mid-October, the Delaware Division of Public Health program aims to reach out to health care providers, especially primary care doctors and substance abuse clinicians, to educate them on whom to screen and how the disease is transmitted.
A story in The News Journal this month detailed how the state’s wave of heroin addiction is driving an explosion of hepatitis C cases among intravenous drug users and the barriers they face to get expensive medication.
Read more.....
More than 200,000 Brits chronically infected with HCV
Around 214,000 individuals are chronically infected with hepatitis C (HCV) in the UK, national estimates from Public Health England (PHE) suggest.
Injecting drug use continues to be the most important risk factor for HCV infection in the UK with half of people who inject drugs (PWID) are thought to have been infected in England and Wales; levels are lower in Northern Ireland (23%) and higher in Scotland (57%).
However, across the UK, more individuals are being tested and diagnosed and “over the last five years particular improvements have been seen in primary care where surveillance indicates that testing has risen by 21%, 46% and 53% in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland respectively”, PHE’s new report Hepatitis C in the UK states.
Read more....
Injecting drug use continues to be the most important risk factor for HCV infection in the UK with half of people who inject drugs (PWID) are thought to have been infected in England and Wales; levels are lower in Northern Ireland (23%) and higher in Scotland (57%).
However, across the UK, more individuals are being tested and diagnosed and “over the last five years particular improvements have been seen in primary care where surveillance indicates that testing has risen by 21%, 46% and 53% in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland respectively”, PHE’s new report Hepatitis C in the UK states.
Read more....
Monday, August 31, 2015
China, Taiwan FDAs accept trial applications for IFN-free HCV regimen
The China and Taiwan Food and Drug Administrations have accepted clinical trial applications filed by Ascletis Innovation for its interferon-free regimen to treat chronic hepatitis C virus infection, according to a press release
Ascletis is the first Chinese company to file clinical trial applications in China for an IFN-free regimen, according to the release, and will initiate a phase 2 trial in Taiwan. The trial will include a combination regimen of Danoprevir (ASC08), a direct-acting antiviral agent and NS3/4A inhibitor, and Ravidasvir (ASC16), an NS5A inhibitor.
“All oral IFN-free regimens are breakthrough treatments of [chronic hepatitis C] marketed outside China at the end of 2014. To date, there are no DAAs approved in China,” Zhuang Hui, MD, academician of the Chinese Engineering Academy and the honorary Chairman of the Chinese society of Hepatology at Peking University Health Science Center, said in the release. “We're very pleased that Ascletis is developing the first IFN-free regimen by a domestic company for [chronic hepatitis C] in China. It shows that the domestic pharmaceutical companies are now catching up with the global development for [chronic hepatitis C].”
Read more.....
Ascletis is the first Chinese company to file clinical trial applications in China for an IFN-free regimen, according to the release, and will initiate a phase 2 trial in Taiwan. The trial will include a combination regimen of Danoprevir (ASC08), a direct-acting antiviral agent and NS3/4A inhibitor, and Ravidasvir (ASC16), an NS5A inhibitor.
“All oral IFN-free regimens are breakthrough treatments of [chronic hepatitis C] marketed outside China at the end of 2014. To date, there are no DAAs approved in China,” Zhuang Hui, MD, academician of the Chinese Engineering Academy and the honorary Chairman of the Chinese society of Hepatology at Peking University Health Science Center, said in the release. “We're very pleased that Ascletis is developing the first IFN-free regimen by a domestic company for [chronic hepatitis C] in China. It shows that the domestic pharmaceutical companies are now catching up with the global development for [chronic hepatitis C].”
Read more.....
Eliminating Hepatitis C Means Treating Prisoners
Barry Michaelson is one of several people with hepatitis C who have sued this year to get access to new and very expensive treatments for the virus. But Michaelson’s lawsuit, unlike most of the others, isn’t against his insurance company. He’s suing the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
In May, Michaelson and another inmate filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Minnesota prisoners to gain access to new, highly effective drugs for hepatitis C, a virus that’s now essentially curable but can cause cirrhosis, liver failure and cancer if left untreated. In the weeks since, similar lawsuits have been filed by inmates in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
It wasn’t until 1992 that we could even test for the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Now we effectively have a cure, but at about $84,000 a person, it’s one of the most expensive drugs to ever hit the market. Insurers, including Medicaid and Medicare, are paying for treatment only for people with advanced liver disease in most cases, causing experts to push the White House to expand treatment. But prisoners, though they are the only group in the U.S. with a constitutional right to health care, are even more limited in access to treatment.
Read more.....
In May, Michaelson and another inmate filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Minnesota prisoners to gain access to new, highly effective drugs for hepatitis C, a virus that’s now essentially curable but can cause cirrhosis, liver failure and cancer if left untreated. In the weeks since, similar lawsuits have been filed by inmates in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
It wasn’t until 1992 that we could even test for the hepatitis C virus (HCV). Now we effectively have a cure, but at about $84,000 a person, it’s one of the most expensive drugs to ever hit the market. Insurers, including Medicaid and Medicare, are paying for treatment only for people with advanced liver disease in most cases, causing experts to push the White House to expand treatment. But prisoners, though they are the only group in the U.S. with a constitutional right to health care, are even more limited in access to treatment.
Read more.....
14 million EU citizens living with Hepatitis C; low figures for Malta
There are currently around 13.3 million Europeans living with hepatitis B and 14 million living with hepatitis C, MEP Miriam Dalli pointed out in a question posed to the European Parliament.
“Approximately 120,000 people in Europe every year die because of these diseases.”
In Malta, the number of cases did not seem high in 2013, with 3.3 people per 100,000 being reported as having been infected that year. The number in other states is considerably higher such as in the UK, where the number stood at 21.5 per 100,000 people (nearly 14,000 in total that year).
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