The World Health Organization’s goal is Eliminate Hepatitis C will become a public health threat by 2030.blood borne virus effects more than 2 million people Hepatitis C killed more than 15,700 people in the United States in 2018, although more than 95 percent of people infected with hepatitis C can be cured if they take medications to treat the disease.
But a new Emory University-led study published Friday in the American Journal of Disease Control and Preventive Medicine shows that a significant number of U.S. state prisons are failing to adequately address the treatable disease. About 55% of infected people in prisons are still not cured. Journal of Infectious Diseases.
we ask Anne Spaulding, MD, The study’s lead author, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Global Health at Emory University rollins school of public healthanswer five questions and explain why these findings are important to prison populations and society at large.
1. Why is this research important to the public?
“We cannot achieve our goal of eliminating hepatitis C by 2030 without treating hepatitis C in the incarcerated population. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world, and the prevalence of hepatitis C in prisons is approximately 10% in the general population 10 times.
A driver of the hepatitis C epidemic is injection drug use, especially when people share needles. This is how the virus spreads from one person to another. To eliminate a treatable infectious disease, you need to know where the hot spots are. Prisons are hotspots for hepatitis C. Our article reveals the hottest of the hotspots. The opioid epidemic has not affected all states equally, and state legal systems have responded differently to drug use. Some states send many people who inject heroin and other drugs to prison, while others send them to rehab. “
2. Why are incarcerated populations a meaningful group to study?
“The incarcerated population has the highest rates of hepatitis C infection and is also lagging behind in access to care. In this study, we demonstrate that the virus is active in 55 percent of those infected in state prisons. “Everyone in Prison All should have access to medical care during this period – willful indifference to the health needs of those in prison violates the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “
3. Did anything surprise you about the results of this study?
“This paper examines exposure to the virus and persistence of infection and shows that heterogeneity in the epidemic remains. Our previous hepatitis C research showed that the proportion of prison populations who have antibodies varies by state. This A new study adds detail to the measurement of virus levels in blood. We now report rates of active infection (viremia) measured by these bloods by state. “This more detailed information magnifies the differences between states, not just is antibody prevalence (markers of past/current infection combined). “
4. Where is access to treatment most lacking?
“Which segment of the legal criminal population is being treated inadequately – that’s easy. Prisons, short-term stays for people awaiting trial. Most of the people in prison today have been in prison before; most of the people in prison will not be in prison. Nearly 10 million Americans are imprisoned each year, many with untreated hepatitis C.
Which prison system has the most people without treatment, and which prison system has a harder time getting infected people to get treatment? These questions are difficult to answer without better data, and our research shows that state prisons vary widely in their understanding of the pandemic. Some states, like Mississippi, can’t tell you how many people have been exposed to the virus. Other countries, like California, can tell you how many people have been exposed to the virus, how many were infected upon entry and how many still need treatment. ”
5. What did you learn from this research that could help solve the problem?
“Measurement of disease prevalence provides a dashboard, so to speak, of where health care planners need to direct their efforts. This has been helpful for COVID-19; for hepatitis C in the incarcerated population, we Similar medications are needed.
Prison health services can systematically treat hepatitis C at a population level. Treatment is expensive, but prices are falling – so curing hepatitis C in prisons is feasible. “