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3 pct of sub-Saharan African population infected with HCV: study

Xinhua, May 7, 2015 Adjust font size:

Around 3 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa have been infected with hepatitis C (HCV), according to a report released on Wednesday by the Imperial College London.

The study, which is the largest of its kind to date, was carried out by researchers from the college and Doctors Without Borders. They collected and analyzed data on over 1.1 million individuals from 213 studies in the African region. They found that 5.7 percent of those infected with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HCV.

Viral hepatitis kills more people each year than HIV, tuberculosis or malaria, and an estimated 150 million people worldwide are infected with HCV, according to the report.

Infected people often do not show symptoms until they have suffered severe liver damage, and many go on to develop liver cirrhosis or liver cancer.

There is no vaccine against the virus, but a new generation of treatments have made possible much quicker and simpler treatment which could be rolled out to regions where access to curative treatment was previously very low. Doctors Without Borders plans to use these new drugs to treat people co-infected with HIV in the region as they are particularly vulnerable to the disease.

Dr Graham Cooke from Imperial College London led the study. He said: "Viral hepatitis is a huge problem in Africa, but currently there's no fund to provide what could be curative treatment. The global scale-up of HIV treatments has left a legacy of systems for both funding and delivering HIV treatment that could be used to tackle viral hepatitis." Endit