Tag: Hepatitis C | Page 5

Hepatitis C reflex testing in Canada: from theory to practice

February 2, 2022 • By Romane Close

Hepatitis C testing in Canada can be complicated. Until recently, hepatitis C testing through provincial labs across the country was standard two-step testing. This approach uses two separate blood samples collected at two separate times. The first blood sample is for the screening test that looks for antibodies to the hepatitis C virus. This screening test determines if a person has ever been exposed to the virus. If this test result is positive, a second blood sample is taken to conduct the confirmatory test that looks for the presence of the hepatitis C virus in the blood. This test confirms...

Changing policies and addressing inequities: The health and wellbeing of people who use drugs

November 23, 2021 • By Rivka Kushner and Nikitah Habraken

The International Network on Health and Hepatitis in Substance Users (INHSU) expanded its mandate in 2020 beyond viral hepatitis to include the holistic health of people who use drugs, and from October 13 to 15, 2021, the organization hosted its first conference with this expanded mandate. Held virtually, this year’s conference brought together people with lived and living experience, healthcare and social service providers, researchers, advocates, policy-makers and community leaders to discuss promising practices, emerging trends, new research and what’s needed to support the health of people who use drugs around the world. An overarching theme of the conference related...

How Rwanda is eliminating hepatitis C and what Canada can learn from its successes

November 18, 2021 • By Dr. Jean Damascene Makuza, Dahn Jeong and Sofia Bartlett

Rwanda is a country situated in sub-Saharan, eastern Africa with a high population density: 499 people per square kilometre in 2018 and a population of 12.6 million people in 2019, an increase of 2.64% from 2018. Although it is among the poorest countries in the world and experienced a genocide against the Tutsi people in 1994, Rwanda has made immense progress in the fields of public health, achieving its Millennium Development Goals for population health, such as reduction of under-five mortality and maternal mortality.

Moving beyond risk-based testing: Checklist for supporting hepatitis C birth cohort screening

July 19, 2021 • By Dr. Sofia Bartlett, Stephanie Gin and Dr. Terri Buller-Taylor

British Columbia is the first province or territory in Canada to recommend one-time birth cohort screening for hepatitis C among people born from 1945 to 1965. This birth cohort has been identified as a key population that needs to be engaged into hepatitis C virus (HCV) care to reduce liver disease complications for several reasons: there are many undiagnosed cases of hepatitis C, they account for nearly 60% of positive hepatitis C results in B.C., and many people in this cohort have not received confirmatory HCV RNA testing.

Talking about hepatitis C with immigrants and newcomers to Canada

July 7, 2021 • By Fozia Tanveer

In Canada, one in three people affected by hepatitis C was born outside of the country. Hepatitis C prevalence among Canadian immigrants and newcomers is double the overall Canadian prevalence. Research also shows that immigrants and newcomers experience worse health outcomes from viral hepatitis and liver cancer when compared to the Canadian-born population, including higher rates of hepatocellular carcinoma and mortality rates from viral hepatitis and liver cancer that are two to four times higher. Talking to Canadian immigrants about hepatitis C becomes very important given the fact that they are a population at risk of disease.

Holding governments accountable: Canada’s progress on viral hepatitis elimination

July 7, 2021 • By Jennifer van Gennip

In May 2021, Action Hepatitis Canada (AHC) released its Progress Toward Viral Hepatitis Elimination in Canada 2021 Report. Five years earlier, in May 2016, Canada had signed on to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) first-ever Global Viral Hepatitis Strategy with the goal of eliminating viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030. With both a cure for hepatitis C (HCV) and a vaccine for hepatitis B (HBV), this seemed to be a very realistic goal within a reasonable timeframe. But five years on, we had important questions about how Canada was really doing as time was ticking on.