Let’s End HepC: The involvement of primary health care towards the HCV elimination in PWIDs

Thursday, 24 November, 2022 - 09:00 to 19:30

Abstract

The prevalence of hepatitis C has its greatest expression in some population segments that are most vulnerable to the disease, such as in People Who Inject Drugs (PWID). The disease is considered a major public health problem, which led the WHO to define an elimination goal for HCV until 2030. To achieve this goal, it is important to understand the public health policies (PHP) impact towards reducing the HCV prevalence worldwide. The Let’s End HepC project provided contributes to this dimension by modelling the impact of 24 PHP in HCV prevalence, in five population segments (Blood Products, Vertical Transmission, Prisoners, PWID, Remnant Population), in five countries (Spain, Portugal, Austria, Romania, Bulgaria). Understanding these effects for each of the PHP is fundamental for countries to take decisions that increase efforts in the elimination of HCV at a national level.

The methods used in the LEHC project were based on the epidemiological modelling of hepatitis C, in each country and population segment, using Markov Chains for the disease’s natural history and the Adaptive Conjoint Analysis. This way it was possible to verify the maximum theoretical application potential for each of the 24 PHP and for a set of HCV epidemiological outputs. Results indicated that the strong involvement of primary health care regarding hepatitis C has a great potential to reduce the disease prevalence in the PWID population of the studied LEHC countries, with a total of 25.639 averted disease cases between the modelling period between 2018 and 2030.

The epidemiologic modelling of hepatitis C provides important contributions towards the HCV elimination goals by reducing the disease burden worldwide. In particular, the strong involvement of primary health care in hepatitis C showed the potential to avoid 25.639 disease cases in the PWID population until 2030, in an example of success regarding microsegment strategies.

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