TAMWORTH campaigner for hepatitis C sufferers Steve Gribbin says the addition of curative and interferon-free treatments on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) was potentially life changing.
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The federal government announced the treatment would be available to all Australians living with hepatitis C from March 1, 2016.
The new sofosbuvir- based treatments have cured hepatitis C in over 95 per cent of cases, which is a game-changing statistic for more than 230,000 sufferers in Australia.
Mr Gribbin said prior to the treatment being placed on the PBS, people living with hepatitis C would have to pay up to $100,000 for a 24-week course on the curative treatment, unless they were placed on the treatment on compassionate grounds.
“I was able to access the treatment on a compassionate trial and I was cleared of the virus in the first two weeks,” Mr Gribbin said.
He said previous interferon-based treatments were akin to having chemotherapy with side effects including hair loss.
“The cure was worse than the disease,” he said.
Mr Gribbin said the news of a highly successful treatment at a very affordable price would bring new hope to sufferers. Mr Gribbin is still on the waiting list for a liver transplant but he said the sofosbuvir treatments would benefit himself and others waiting for a transplant.
Previous treatments had not completely cured the virus because donees had received transplants that would lead to their new livers becoming infected, he said.
Mr Gribbin was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1991, but he estimated he contracted the disease long before then and guessed it was from a tattoo he received at 17, some 36 years ago.
When he was diagnosed, the disease was called a non-b hepatitis and in his lifetime Mr Gribbin has seen the virus gone from being unnamed to curable with a PBS listed treatment.
“Many thought it couldn’t happen,” he said.
Hepatitis C is a blood-borne virus, transmitted when the blood of a person living with hepatitis C gets into the blood stream of another person. This happens mainly when people share equipment to use drugs, but also through unsterile tattooing and body piercing.
In 2014 an estimated 690 people died from hepatitis C-related liver diseases.
