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Federal & State Govts Ignore HCV Epidemic - Immediate HCV Treatment is BEST / Delayed Treatment Increases Risk 7-20 fold for Death & Liver Cancer - federal & state governments support denial of early treatment - HCV is CURABLE with 12 weeks therapy!!!!
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from Jules: It's the White House & Congress that are responsible for this ignoring of HCV. Ultimately all policy & large scale funding commitments comes from the White House and/or Congress. But they persist to essentially ignore the state medicaid restrictions, they are complicit in this because they are very well aware of the restrictions.
"another silent epidemic within the opioid & IDU outbreak BUT ALSO within the HCV epidemic in the USA - is - the doubling of HCV infection among young pregnant women of reproductive age. The federal and state governments have essentially ignored the HCV epidemic - clearly, by Congress only giving the CDC Hepatitis Division $38 million a year, while we need a billion a year just to get started in implementing a national strategy to eliminate HCV. HCV is curable & we could eliminate HCV in the USA. Elimination is cost effective - over the long term a lot of healthcare costs would be saved & a lot of lives would be saved and much disease would be prevented.
THIS STUDY is the latest in a series of studies providing evidence that treating HCV earlier prevents disease progression & delaying treatment increases risk for liver cancer & death quite a lot, and earlier treatment is cost effective too:
EASL: Back Early versus delayed hepatitis C treatment provides increased health benefits at lower costs: A UK cost-effectiveness analysis of genotypes 1 and 4 treatment-naïve patients- (05/03/17)
Right now state Medicaid programs impose restrictions on access to new HCV "cure" drug regimens to those with advanced disease, by this point in the progression of HCV disease this increases the rates & risk for developing serious disease. HCV-infected should be treated immediately, in early disease as studies show this prevents disease progression & response to therapy is better & this prevents risk for future HCC (liver cancer), not to treat early increases the risk for developing liver cancer. The federal government knows very well that state medicaid programs impose these harsh restrictions to access to treatment, so they are complicit. We need national & state screening & linkage to care programs but there are very few, and with congress providing only $38 mill to the CDC they are very limited.
Can you imagine if cancer or heart disease, or diabetes were curable with 12 weeks of treatment? I think there would be a public outcry that the federal and state governments would have to respond to, the stigma of HCV is a big barrier.
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