this Association of Transplant and Liver Patients of Navarre (Atehna) Already thought this Friday, the Foral community was Able to “become one of the first regions to eradicate hepatitis C” — the 2030 targets set by the World Health Organization (WHO) –“. To this end, it has urged health authorities “Find 150 (between 100 and 200, according to the Institute of Public Health) undiagnosed active infections and an additional 200 who have previously tested positive for antibodies But now we don’t know how they are”, has indicated that the vowels Antonio Garciawho emphasized that From January 2015 to January last year, 1,896 people have been cured with the latest treatment.about half of whom require a liver transplant and the rest 351 people were co-infected with HIV.
“ If we cured 2,000 patients and prevented nearly half of them from ending up with a transplant, the health sector saved a ton of money “
Antonio Garcia – Member of Atehna
“We’ve gone from a serious public health problem to a disease that’s actually considered residual,” Garcia explained, in the sense that if cases are found, “they’re treated and cured. “. In this sense, he points out that, despite their high cost, these treatments are not only beneficial to humans but also to the economy, which led them to lock themselves in the University Hospital of Navarre in January 2015 in order to claim their The right to prompt access to these treatments. As they pointed out, this effort should not stop when there are untreated patients and could be a source of transmission, so he asked Osasunbidia, especially in the primary care sector, not to miss the opportunity to test to Just in case of any doubt, it is emphasized that among the high-risk groups, people born before 1980 and people from high-endemic countries.
Increased incidence of HIV
For her part, the coordinator SareeThey joined the fight for a new treatment, recalls Raquel Turumbay, “Today 351 people co-infected with hepatitis C have been cured, we estimate around 400, some have been reinfected, but none have been cured” .As such, he insists that “hepatitis C is no longer a problem for people living with HIV,” but warns HIV incidence in Navarra “has reached pre-pandemic levels: 38 cases last year, 11 already in the first quarter of 2023”. Therefore, it believes that “coordinated prevention, ie condom use, early diagnosis, and pre- and post-exposure treatment are important”.
“ We’re worried about HIV rates because we’re hitting pre-pandemic levels “
Raquel Turumbay – Saree Coordinator
In this regard, the coordinator Citizens Committee on AIDS PreventionJon Uranga claims HIV and Hepatitis C treatments are guaranteed.
Four recent cases of hepatitis C infection
- 2022. Last year, 4 cases of active infection (3 of them women) were diagnosed with evidence of recent hepatitis C virus infection in Navarra, compared to 6 cases in 2021. Two of them had a history of injecting drug use and the other two were partners of affected persons. Two cases were reinfections in people who were treated and cured. According to the Institute of Public Health, 23 active infections were diagnosed in 2022: 6 of them were acquired before living in Navarre and 17 were from undiagnosed cases.