Global praise for Egyptian experience to curb Hepatitis C

The head of  Geneva based  World Hepatitis Alliance Charles Gore praised the Egyptian experience to curb Hepatitis C epidemic, calling the world to get benefit from such experience according to the British Newspaper Financial Times.
 
Egyptian government launched a first of its kind program two years ago to cure the disease, and it has succeeded to cure about 2 million patients.
 
“We are thrilled because what was really needed was a champion country to say ‘Yes we can do this” says Charles Gore.
 
“We have such large numbers of the infection globally, so we really need to know how to do this. Egypt is providing such a wonderful field test”, he added.
 
Egypt has one of the world’s highest incidence rates of hepatitis C — about 7 per cent of its 90m population have the virus.
 
 
Egyptian health officials reached a deal with Gilead in 2014 to purchase the three-month course of medication for $900 — a massive discount compared with the $84,000 then charged in the US, however, Egypt program has come to rely on a much cheaper medicine produced locally costs 80 $.
 
some 700,000 people die every year from liver disease related to hepatitis C, according to the World Health Organisation.
 
Wahid Doss, head of the Egyptian National Committee for the Control of Viral Hepatitis, says that are 6 million patient in Egypt who does not know that they are infected, adding that 150 thousand individual gets infected annually because lack of health awareness.