Tag: Hepatitis C prevention

Eliminating hepatitis C among Canadian immigrants and newcomers: how CanHepC’s blueprint will impact my work

The Canadian Network on Hepatitis C (CanHepC) is leading a national effort to develop a consensus blueprint to meet the World Health Organization’s hepatitis C elimination targets by 2030. The goal of the blueprint is to guide various stakeholders with specific and measurable objectives on how to address hepatitis C in different Canadian contexts.  I’m excited for the initial draft of the blueprint, coming out this fall, as it will greatly impact my work.

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What it will take to eliminate hepatitis C in Canada

Canada is one of 194 countries that endorsed the World Health Organization’s Global Health Sector Strategy on Viral Hepatitis in 2016, committing to – among other things – the elimination of viral hepatitis as a major public health threat by 2030. But what does eliminating viral hepatitis mean in practice? The recent Global Hepatitis Summit in Toronto from June 14 to 17, 2018, brought together researchers, healthcare providers, and public health practitioners from around the world to try to answer this question. Presenters shared the latest research findings, marked which countries are on track to meet the targets, and discussed...

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Le site d’injection supervisée de l’organisme montréalais Dopamine : bientôt un an déjà

Depuis plus de 10 ans que nous attendions ce moment : les sites d’injection supervisée (SIS) sont arrivés! Nous y voilà rendus! Ça fait bientôt un an que nous sommes ouverts. Mise en contexte : les SIS sont un projet régional qui est chapeauté par plusieurs structures. Quatre organismes communautaires, dont Dopamine, et le Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux du Centre-Sud-de-l’Île-de-Montréal sont dans le coup et assurent les ressources humaines nécessaires pour mettre en place un tel service. Ceci dit, Dopamine est un organisme en réduction des méfaits qui travaille en prévention VIH, VHC et autres ITSS dans...

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Eliminating viral hepatitis is possible: Four lessons from the World Hepatitis Summit

As deaths from many communicable diseases continue to decline globally, deaths caused by viral hepatitis have now surpassed all other chronic infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. Yet it is one of the few global health threats with easy solutions. Highly effective vaccines exist for hepatitis A and B. We now have a cure for hepatitis C. With these tools at our disposal, why aren’t we seeing an impact on the epidemic?

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Is this the end for HCV drug development?

The last seven years have seen a whirlwind of hepatitis C virus (HCV) drug development. Each new treatment is generally more potent than the last. The latest treatments approved for HCV in Canada this week include Maviret (made by AbbVie) and Vosevi (made by Gilead). Clinical trials of these treatments, which people take in pill form, resulted in high rates of cure (usually greater than 95 per cent) with few serious side effects. Although it will be six months or more before these drugs ascend to provincial, territorial and other formularies, their approval signals that the end of drug development...

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