Defuse the hepatitis C “time bomb”; end the war on people who use drugs.

World Hepatitis Day is July 28th, and whilst some 500 million people globally are living with hepatitis B or C, the day barely receives any coverage, and there is a massive lack of investment in promoting awareness of this lethal virus which ultimately causes liver cancer and cirrhosis. Because hepatitis C is primarily transmitted through blood to blood contact, the vast bulk of the disease burden falls on people who inject drugs.

Some 10 million of the world’s 16 million people who inject drugs are thought to be infected with hepatitis C, yet because of a chronic lack of surveillance and testing, many are unaware that they are carrying the virus until it has wrought irreparable damage. The failure to adequately respond to this public health catastrophe, one that the WHO has called a “viral time bomb”, is very substantially driven by stigma and drug war politics. The heavy disease burden borne by the injecting community is stoked by investment in repressive responses rather than the basic preventative measures that could avert this entirely avoidable suffering and mass death. The Global Commission on Drug Policy in their recent report The Negative Impact of the War on Drugs on Public Health: The Hidden Hepatitis C Epidemic state that “instead of investing in effective prevention and treatment programmes to achieve the required coverage, governments continue to waste billions of dollars each year on arresting and punishing drug users – a gross misallocation of limited resources that could be more efficiently used for public health and preventive approaches. At the same time, repressive drug policies have fuelled the stigmatisation, discrimination and mass incarceration of people who use drugs”.

Click here to read the full statement.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.