Hepatitis C: looking at progress in the fight to achieve elimination

In April 2019, NHS England struck a deal with leading pharmaceutical companies to eliminate hepatitis C virus (HCV), an unprecedented move that hailed the start of a national HCV elimination programme.¹ It involved those companies, which have developed ground-breaking direct-acting antiviral (DAA) medicines, becoming directly involved in various projects that collectively formed the effort to eliminate a virus that, at the beginning of my career as a hepatologist, did not even have a name.

        Hepatitis C is a bloodborne virus. People can develop serious and long-term consequences affecting the liver, sometimes leading to their death if the virus is not treated. Around 89,000 people² in England have chronic HCV infection, and about 143,000³ are affected by chronic HCV in the UK.

        Over the past few years, even before the positive steps taken by NHS England, much progress had been made in reducing HCV among the population. In May 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) approved the first ‘Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis, 2016–2021’, where targets were set to eliminate HCV as a public health problem. The UK adopted WHO’s goal of reducing new HCV infections by 90% and cut deaths by 65% by 2030.⁴ In January 2018, NHS England decided to go further in deciding to eliminate the viral hepatitis by 2025 in England.⁵