Hep C Targets in Trouble Australia likely to miss hepatitis C targets
D
espite having been one of the leading countries in the global campaign to eliminate viral hepatitis, Australia may now not meet its 2022 national hepatitis C treatment target or the 2030 global target.
and 2020, close to 88,800 people received hepatitis C treatment. This brought the number of people with chronic hepatitis C to just over 122,260 at the end of 2019, including new diagnoses.
The proportion of people with hepatitis C taking up treatment has dropped steadily since the initial surge in 2016. Although close to half of Australians living with hepatitis C have been treated since, we will not meet our national target of having 65% treated by 2022 if the decline continues. Nor will we meet the 2030 global target of treating 80% of people with hepatitis C.
South Australia, which has the lowest hepatitis C
prevalence (0.51%) at the start of 2016, is also the state with the highest rate of treatment uptake (58%). The highest hepatitis C prevalence (1.54%) among the eight states and territories is in the Northern Territory, which also has the lowest treatment uptake (21.6%).
CHC treatment in Australia, by month, March 2016–December 2020
These were key findings from the Viral Hepatitis Mapping Project National Report 2020. At the start of 2016, there were close to 189,000 people living with hepatitis C in Australia. Between 2016
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