Treatment low but...Manipur records 82 pc Hepatitis C infection rate
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, July 28 2013: Whereas Hepatitis C infection among injecting drugs users is quite high, treatment rate is abysmally low.

According to a survey report of the Asian Network of People Who Use Drugs, 189 injecting drug users were randomly selected from Manipur and Delhi each for Hepatitis C test and 82 per cent of them were found positive.

Modes of transmission of HIV and Hepatitis C are similar.

As such, there are many cases where a person is co-infected by both HIV and Hepatitis C .

Manipur Network of Positive People conducted Hepatitis C test on 221 people who have been registered under MSACS' Oral Substitute Therapy (OST) project.

Out of them 200 were found positive.

Out of the 200 persons who were found positive, 164 were found positive for both HIV and HCV.

42 of them have succumbed to the infections.

According to MNP+ president Deepak, of all the HCV positive people registered for MNP+'s OST project, two have been treated.

Others do not have the capacity to go in for similar treatments.

Treatment of HCV positive injecting drug users requires just six months.

The treatment period extends to almost one year if the person is both HIV and HCV positive.

Treatment of HCV positive people for six months requires around Rs 1.80 lakh.

As for treatment of Hepatitis C infection in persons who are both HIV and HCV positive, around Rs 3.60 lakhs is required for purchasing medicines.

If Hepatitis C infection is not treated in time out of ignorance or other reasons, people suffer from liver cirrhosis, liver failure and other liver ailments which ultimately cause death, Deepak said.

There are 29 HCV and HIV positive women among the people registered under SASO's OST project.

SASO's Targeted Intervention programme detected 39 people co-infected by HCV and HIV in Imphal East while the corresponding figure for Imphal West is 66 .

Although ART is provided to HIV positive people, there is no such Government arrangement for people co-infected by HIV and HCV, Deepak said.

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