People living with Hepatitis C face a postcode lottery for care while up to €22m in annual funding for the virus remains unspent, the Oireachtas health committee will be told on Wednesday.
Representatives from the Hepatitis C Partnership are to make a presentation to TDs and Senators highlighting challenges facing clinicians and patients around Ireland. The report says that while 80 per cent of Dublin-based practitioners agreed that sufficient resources are in place to treat everyone who needs it, this falls to just 20 per cent outside the capital.
Around 20,000 people in Ireland are living with chronic Hepatitis C, a virus which causes liver inflammation. Of these, many are undiagnosed and unaware that a cure is available.
“At the moment, there is an inequality in access to Hepatitis C care in that the care that you receive is largely dependent on your location in the country and your characteristics as a patient,” the report states.
It found several reasons for the disparity between Dublin and the rest of the country including proximity to care.
“Despite some progress in making community care more available, Hepatitis C treatment is still largely hospital-based, and people in rural areas are, on average, simply located further from care than is the case for urban residents. The reality is that five of the eight hospitals providing specialist Hepatitis C care are located in Dublin. This is then compounded by a public transport infrastructure that is not as robust in rural areas as it is in the capital, causing substantial accessibility difficulties.”
It says another reason for the disparity was policy choices, which are “difficult to justify and militate against treatment being accessible in the community. For example, although it is possible for Hepatitis C to be treated in the community by GPs, such access is generally restricted to people who are already on opioid substitution treatment”.
There has been a significant drive across the world to eliminate Hepatitis C Virus as a public health threat by 2030, led by the World Health Organisation. Recent research has estimated that Ireland will not eliminate Hepatitis C until after 2050.
