While epidemiologists and public health experts are excited by the potential of new hepatitis C drugs to limit onward transmission of the virus among people who inject drugs, the strategies ignore profound barriers to drug users engaging with healthcare and their broader needs. For ‘treatment as prevention’ to be ethical and acceptable to people who inject drugs, enabling treatment and policy environments need to be created, the 24th International Harm Reduction Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, heard last week.
But there is also an opportunity: “Treatment as prevention has the potential to be a powerful advocacy tool for enhancing treatment access for people who inject drugs,” Magdalena Harris of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told the conference. Her analysis was co-authored with Eliot Albers of the International Network of People Who Use Drugs and Tracy Swan of Treatment Action Group.
Borrowed from the HIV field, the concept of ‘treatment as prevention’ is now being applied to hepatitis C. Modelling studies suggest significantly increasing the number of injecting drug users whose hepatitis C is treated and cured could help prevent onward transmission of the virus.