Pathways to ensure universal and affordable access to hepatitis C treatment

Hepatitis C and Hiv: a Growing Threat to Universal Access

April 2009 In 2005, G8 leaders promised that by 2010 Universal Access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support would be widely available. Since then, much has been accomplished and over 2 million people are now on anti‐retroviral treatment. However, as people with HIV live longer, opportunistic and related illnesses that threaten their health are exposed. Whilst Hepatitis C is an adjunct...

Dried Blood Spots: A Tool to Ensure Broad Access to Hepatitis C Screening, Diagnosis, and Treatment Monitoring.

BACKGROUND With the advent of highly efficient antiviral therapies for hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, providing broad access to diagnosis and care is needed. The dried blood spot (DBS) technique can be used to collect, store, and ship whole-blood specimens. Our goal was to assess the performance of standardized HCV diagnostic and monitoring tools in the analysis of DBS. METHODS Serum spec...

Access to hepatitis C medicines

Hepatitis C is a global epidemic. Worldwide, 185 million people are estimated to be infected, most of whom live in low- and middle-income countries. Recent advances in the development of antiviral drugs have produced therapies that are more effective, safer and better tolerated than existing treatments for the disease. These therapies present an opportunity to curb the epidemic, provided that t...

Beyond Scaling Up: Pathways to Universal Access to Health Services

Detection of Pre-treatment mutations leading to resistance to direct hepatitis C virus blocking drugs in patients with chronic hepatitis C

Background and objective: Human is the only host of hepatitis C virus. This virus has a positive single stranded RNA and lipoprotein envelop that has 7 confirmed genotypes. According to studies, genotypes 1a, 3a and 1b are the most common genotypes in Iran. No effective vaccine against HCV infection has been developed instead, advances in antiviral treatment using drugs that directly affect spe...