Egypt wins acclaim for aggressive campaign against hepatitis C

Egypt has undertaken an aggressive campaign to eradicate hepatitis C both domestically and abroad, France 24 reports.

The disease became an epidemic in the nation back in the 1960s and 1970s when needles used during a mass immunization program were not sterilized well.

It spread widely due to little awareness, rendering Egypt as the country with the highest rate of hepatitis C in the world.

In 2008, an estimated 14 percent of the population carried the virus, said an Egyptian survey carried out at the time.

According to a study conducted by the Center for Disease Analysis (CDA) in the US and the National Liver Institute in Egypt, hepatitis C was a major drain on the Egyptian economy, counting for four percent of all direct healthcare expenditure.

However, a new orally administered drug, Sofosbuvir, came on the market in December 2013 and helped the Egyptian government tackle the disease.

Before the new drug, the standard treatment was based on injections of interferon proteins, which not only has debilitating side effects but a relatively low success rate of between 19 and 60 percent, depending on a person’s genotype, the report said.

The new drug combined with supplementary medications has a success rate between 95 and 98 percent, said Professor Wahid Doss, chairman of Egypt’s National Committee for the Control of Viral Hepatitis.

The new drug was expensive and access was a problem with a 12-week course of treatment costing about 84,000 US dollars.

To solve that problem, in 2015, Egyptian company Pharco began to manufacture a generic version that cost about 80 US dollars for three months of treatment.

The move helped the government to launch a massive and widely lauded program to wipe out the disease.

According to Dr. Alaa Hashish, a medical officer with the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Cairo, all the member states of the WHO are looking to the Egyptian program as a pioneer program based on the success.

Since the program started, 1.7 million of those infected have been treated, and waiting lists for the drugs have since disappeared.

In a move to eradicate the disease completely, the government has set out to launch a nationwide screening program to help identify remaining 3.3 million people who don’t realize they are infected with the virus.

To help find new patients, Pharco has put eight mobile clinics into service that will travel throughout the country providing free screenings, said company CEO Sherine Helmy.

By 2018, 30 million Egyptians will have been tested, the report quotes him as saying.

(CGTN)