Eliminating hepatitis C from New Zealand could be possible if access can be secured to emerging drugs, Associate Prof Catherine Stedman says.
Prof Stedman, a gastroenterologist/hepatologist at the University of Otago in Christchurch, was involved in a ''consensus statement'' issued after a recent summit in Wellington.
The virus was curable in more than 90% of patients with new drugs that involve a short course of treatment. Various pharmaceutical companies were in the process of putting proposals to drug buying agency Pharmac. None of the new drugs was funded yet in New Zealand.
The summit, on World Hepatitis Day, was hosted by pharmaceutical company AbbVie.
''From my perspective, it's a curable virus with a one-off course of treatment.
''There aren't that many things in medicine you can do that with.''
The consensus statement was the first time a group in New Zealand had agreed that elimination of the virus was a realistic goal.
Many people did not know hepatitis C was curable, she said. Sufferers who contracted the virus in the 1970s and 1980s were becoming ill with liver cancer and liver failure now, she said.
This was reflected in cases of liver cancer caused by hepatitis C increasing by 10% a year.
