Hundreds of clinicians, researchers and people with lived experience gathered in Montreal in September 2019 to highlight promising work in hepatitis C research and practice. The 8th International Conference on Hepatitis Care in Substance Users (INHSU 2019) showcased innovative models of care that support the delivery of hepatitis C treatment.
An introduction by Dr. Jordan Feld, University Health Network Nearly 250,000 Canadians are living with hepatitis C (HCV), yet 45% are undiagnosed and remain at risk of developing complications related to long-term liver damage like liver cancer. Hepatitis C causes more years of life lost than any other infectious disease in Canada. Fortunately, with the arrival of safe treatment that cures more than 95% of people, combined with simple diagnostic methods and effective prevention strategies, we now have the tools to eliminate hepatitis C.
This blog post is a follow-up from an earlier post published on July 11, 2019. As I work on a new funding proposal, this statement strikes me: over 11,500 people in Canada have lost their lives as a result of opioid-related overdoses between January 2016 and December 2018 and we keep losing people every day. So many lives lost! And why is that? The evidence is clear that overdose prevention sites save lives! After I returned from a hands-on training in the Downtown East Side of Vancouver, one of the hardest hit places in the overdose crisis, it became even...
“Chasing the new is dangerous to society.” I read this quote at an activist art exhibition and it got me thinking about Halifax, my city, and of the group that I belong to. What if the old way of healthcare is actually dangerous to society at a whole?
We are in the midst of an incredibly dynamic moment in the world of medicine and public health. Hepatitis C research has progressed so rapidly that the virus could be eliminated as a public health threat only 40 years after its discovery in 1989.
Canada is one of 194 countries that have signed on to the World Health Organization’s Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis, committing to eliminate hepatitis C as a public health threat by 2030. The wide availability of a cure for all Canadians, along with new tools to prevent and diagnose hepatitis C, mean that elimination is now possible for the first time. This year, new research and examples from other countries have shown how we can approach an elimination strategy, and Canada has started to build momentum. Here are five approaches that we can adopt to make hepatitis C...
