Jerez joins the national campaign to mark World Hepatitis Day

Jerez and the 19 other cities included in the #HepCityFree program want to look for people living with hepatitis C and not knowing it, given that it is a silent disease that goes on without symptoms for years and that in many cases, when diagnosed, it has already caused irreversible liver damage. On this occasion and on the occasion World Hepatitis Daywhich will be celebrated on July 28, these cities are going to launch through their media and social media profiles a campaign whose protagonist is the actor Carmelo Gomez, who was cured of hepatitis C, and whose goal is precisely to raise awareness of the character. silent diagnosis of the disease and to promote both detection and the beginning of treatment.

Delegate of Social Inclusion, Jessica Quinteropraised Jerez’s commitment to the #HepCityFree program and the opportunity to collaborate in achieving its goals, focusing on health promotion and information as an important tool in both prevention and early diagnosis.

Carmelo Gomez’s case was similar to many other patients who contracted the virus through blood transfusions before this route of transmission was discovered and put an end to in the mid-90s. In his case, the diagnosis was accidental, when he went to donate blood in the late 90s and was told he couldn’t because he had a liver condition. He had wanted to avoid hepatitis C for some time, but he couldn’t when the symptoms started to appear. In the video, he says he felt tired and, above all, very sad because he didn’t know how the disease would progress. The treatment he was following had serious side effects and didn’t cure the disease. Until the advent of direct-acting antiviral drugs changed the course of his life, returning him to normal. Within weeks, he was cured.

Patients diagnosed today receive treatment that is effective in almost 100% of cases.. Hence the importance of early detection of the infection, before it causes irreversible liver damage. “Fortunately, with Carmelo we arrived in time, and with the diagnostic and treatment options we now have, we should arrive in time for the hundreds of patients who still die every year in Spain from causes related to hepatitis C,” says hepatologist Javier García-Samaniego, coordinator of the Alliance to Eliminate Viral Hepatitis, AEHVE, which brings together scientific societies and patient associations committed to eliminating hepatitis C and promotes the #HepCityFree program, which encourages the involvement of cities in the search for the last cases of hepatitis C.

A search that, according to hepatologists, should be carried out both in the general population, by testing all adults aged 50 to 85 years without a previous negative test for hepatitis C, and in particular in vulnerable groups, where prevalence is higher and they are more difficult to access. This is where cities can make a great contribution, since, alone or in collaboration with surrounding NGOs, they have greater potential to reach these populations, and especially homeless groups, intravenous drug users and men who have sex with men and those involved in risky behavior, which are the main sources of active infection in Spain. “Our Hepatitis C Free Cities program, #HepCityFree, has shown that the greater proximity of local organizations to these populations is a strategic advantage to achieve the goal of eliminating the disease,” says García-Samaniego.

With almost 170,000 patients treated and cured since 2015 (more than 1,000 in Jerez), our country leads the world in terms of people treated and cured per million population. The Ministry of Health estimated the prevalence of the infection at 0.22% in 2018, and today, according to experts, it will be less than 0.1%. Despite this, hepatitis C continues to cause four deaths a week in our country. Late diagnosis of the infection, which occurs in more than a third of cases, means that the damage it causes to the liver is irreversible. “Every year in Spain there are 188 deaths due to causes related to hepatitis C, and we cannot be complacent: they represent almost 10% of road deaths, and like those, they are preventable and avoidable,” says García-Samaniego.

“Spain has the opportunity to make history and be the first country among developed countries to put an end to a public health problem like hepatitis C. But to win this battle, we need to take seriously what is called public health policy, that is, we must accompany the treatment of all cases with other actions in terms of measurement, prevention, early diagnosis and care of risk groups,” explains the AEHVE coordinator and head of the hepatology department at HU La Paz, who insists on the key role of cities in all this.

About Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C is an important public health problem due to its incidence, morbidity and mortality, and health care costs. Before the advent of direct-acting antiviral drugs, it was the leading cause of end-stage liver disease and liver cancer in Western countries and the leading indication for liver transplantation.

The most common causes of infection are unsafe injection practices, improper sterilization of medical equipment, and transfusion of blood and blood products before 1990. infected mother to child.

Hepatitis C is a silent disease that does not cause symptoms. There is no vaccine against hepatitis C, but there is a treatment that cures the disease in almost 100% of cases.

About AEKhVE

In February 2017, scientific societies and patient associations committed to the WHO goal of ending viral hepatitis as a public health problem by 2030 created the Alliance to Eliminate Viral Hepatitis in Spain (AEHVE) with the intention of advancing this goal, since Spain already had a Strategic Plan to Combat Hepatitis C (PEEAHC). AEHVE is made up of the Spanish Association for the Study of the Liver (AEEH), the Spanish Society of Digestive Pathology (SEPD), the Spanish Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC), the Spanish Society of Family and Community Medicine (semFYC), the Spanish Society of General Medicine (SEMERGEN), the Spanish Society of General Medicine (SEMG), the Spanish Society of Penitentiary Health (SESP), the Spanish Society of Virology (SEV), and the Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy (SEFH). ), Socidrogalcohol (Spanish Scientific Society for the Study of Alcohol, Alcoholism and Other Drugs), CIBERehd (Center for Network Biomedical Research on Liver Diseases), Barcelona Institute for Global Health (IS Global), National Federation of Liver and Transplant Patients (FNETH), Catalan Association of Hepatitis Patients (ASSCAT) and the Madrid Platform for People Affected by Hepatitis C (PLAFHC Madrid).