50,0 Finding 50,000
National project to increase HCV treatment rates
A
hunt will soon be on to find 50,000 Australians with hepatitis C who are missing out on getting cured.
The ‘Finding 50,000’ campaign will target geographically dispersed and socially diverse people who so far, have not been reached by the “business-as-usual” national hepatitis C response. Led by Hepatitis Australia and funded by the Federal government as part of a larger project, ‘Finding 50,000’ will work with local services and communities to engage with 50,000 people with hepatitis C by the end of 2022.
Geo-targeting
This geo-targeted campaign will be implemented in 16 areas nationally. State and Territory Health Departments have been asked to identify Primary Health Network (PHN) areas as targets for on-the-ground implementation. These are areas:
•
which are not already being targeted in other campaigns or projects.
By focusing on specific locations, activities can be integrated, and by selecting locations where there is capacity to scale up services, the impact of the campaign can be maximised to increase hepatitis C testing and treatment.
The 16 geographic areas include four in New South Wales, three each in Queensland and Victoria, two in Western Australia and one each in the ACT, Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania.
SA: A Granular Approach
•
where testing and treatment uptake are low,
South Australia has just two PHNs, both of which have relatively high hepatitis C treatment uptake. SA Health has therefore adopted a more granular approach by identifying Australian Bureau of Statistics sub areas (SA3) within the Adelaide PHN as target locations.
•
which are unlikely to reach the national 2022 targets without additional effort, and
Four metropolitan SA3 regions—Port Adelaide – West, Port Adelaide – East, Playford and Salisbury—were
2
HEPATITIS SA COMMUNITY NEWS 93 • March 2022
recommended. The four areas are over-represented in the number of people with untreated hepatitis C.
In making the recommendations, Tom Rees, Manager STI & BBV Section, SA Health, said that the most recent Viral Hepatitis Mapping Report showed that in 2020 these four SA3s contained 21% of the overall South Australian population, and 34% of all South Australians living with hepatitis C who were yet to access treatment. He further pointed out that postcodes with lower socioeconomic indices have higher hepatitis C notifications, quoting a study into the socioeconomic burden of hepatitis C in SA which stated that “HCV notifications were 7 times more likely to be from people residing in the least economically-resourced 10% of postcodes, and 20 times more likely compared to people living in the wealthiest deciles”. The SA3 of Port Adelaide – East, Port Adelaide – West, Playford and Salisbury are also served by existing services which can be scaled
