The meeting of the National Supervisory Committee on Hepatitis C Treatment was held on 2 September 2016 within implementation of the third phase of innovative hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment program in Ukraine. Previous meeting of the Committee was convened over twelve months ago, so it was a great opportunity to discuss the effectiveness of the existing treatment programs and plan further steps to overcome hepatitis C epidemic in Ukraine.
Alliance remains an agent of change and progressive innovations in HCV treatment in Ukraine, in particular within the new phase of the treatment program:
- For the first time in Ukraine, the program will use a new direct-acting antiviral, which has higher treatment success rates as compared to sofosbuvir.
- The existing treatment program will be scaled up by 750 more courses.
- The program will cover 17 oblasts – it will include Khmelnytskyi and Donetsk oblasts it has not reached before.
- A separate quota of treatment courses will be allocated for the population, which in the recent years became a new important risk group from the point of view of HCV, with the coverage of this group with national budget funds currently being extremely low.
- A joint project of several international organizations will be launched at the oblast level, which will allow establishing a unique model of the impact on epidemic through the example of a rather small cohort of patients localized in one oblast.
During the meeting, results of the innovative sofosbuvir-based treatment program implemented by Alliance were presented. In particular, the project covers a much bigger group of patients than initially planned – 1,150 (153% of the planned number). 705 persons have already completed their treatment. Based on the laboratory diagnostics results, 12 weeks after treatment completion the virus was not detected in 93% of patients. Besides, within the project almost 100 doctors acquired knowledge on the use of innovative direct-acting antivirals. You can get more detailed information on the results of Alliance program and distribution of the treatment courses here.
To get more about eligibility C criteria of the Hepatitis C Treatment Program, please follow the linkwww.aph.react-aph.org/hepc_en