Resources

This is a recording of a webinar covering initiatives to test and treat people for hepatitis C in contact with the justice system in England, held on the 23rd October 2020. Previous events and initiatives in this area have aimed to support people in prisons. Whilst this is important and continues, this webinar focused on new initiatives for people in contact with other areas of the justice system, such as probation services. The webinar featured 3 talks:

This report summarises the October 2020 HCV Action webinar on hepatitis C case-finding in under-served groups, which formed part of a week-long series of webinars centred around the National Hepatitis C ODN Stakeholder Event. The webinar focused on four under-served groups in particular: Gypsy, Roma and Travellers; migrants; sex-workers, and the South Asian community. The webinar featured contributions from the following speakers: • Beth Davies – Head of Service and Development (Dorset), EDP Drug & Alcohol Services • Dr Inês Campos-Matos – Head of Migration Health, Public Health England

The 2020 edition of the Unlinked Anonymous Monitoring (UAM) Survey of HIV and viral hepatitis among PWID contains a number of relevant updates on hepatitis C among injecting drug users, including: • The proportion of UAM participants with antibodies to hepatitis C (HCV) (i.e. ever infected) who have markers of chronic infection (RNA) has decreased from 58% in 2011 when it was first measured to 42% in 2019; this corresponds with the timing of the scale-up of direct acting antiviral treatment against HCV among PWID

With the Covid-19 outbreak having caused significant disruption to health services in Scotland, including those for hepatitis C, as well as drug and alcohol services, HCV Action organised a webinar to discuss how services and the drive to elimination in Scotland have been affected. This report provides a summary of the remarks from each of the four speakers and the Q&A which followed.