This report from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction provides an overview of infectious disease surveillance data, outbreak investigations, and prevention and control measures among people who inject drugs in Europe up to February 2019, including viral hepatitis.
Hepatitis C: Out of control. An audit of Strategic Health Authority hepatitis c governance
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In 2004 the Department of Health published the Hepatitis C Action Plan for England, which set out actions on surveillance, research, increasing awareness and prevention and improving service quality for patients. However, there is concern, most recently expressed by the All Party Parliamentary Hepatology Group in its report, Divided Nations: Tackling the hepatitis C challenge across the UK, that there is a lack of implementation of the Action Plan because of poor governance arrangements, monitoring and evaluation1.
This audit of Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) shows that 70% of SHAs are failing to oversee the implementation of the Action Plan, despite the fact that responsibility for oversight is placed with them in the Action Plan. Some are not aware of any local arrangements in place to deliver the Plan. Furthermore, there is absolutely no mechanism for checking that SHAs have been performing their oversight role.
