alt Hacker NewsEngland set to be one of the first countries to eliminate hepatitis C
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Makes me wonder if this project is the reason for a slight downturn in Liver cancer from 2019 forward in the UK.
https://crukcancerintelligence.shinyapps.io/CancerStatsDataH...
Interesting that it's just England (and not Scotland, Wales, or NI). I realize they all have independent NHSs, but still would assume a program like this would rolled out across all the constituent countries.
Good for you. We get explosive diarrhea as the prize in the States. Wanna trade?
Seeing a 36% drop in mortality over a decade is huge progress, but it’s a good reminder that "elimination as a public health threat" still relies heavily on reaching hard to find, undiagnosed populations. The free home-testing push should help bridge that last gap.
I guess someone complained about memory safety and they intend to rewrite hepatitis in Rust.
Not everything has to be rewritten in Rust! Hepatitis is a virus, C is much better suited for that kind of project, Rust is for fungal diseases, not viruses.
There is a pretty striking contrast here with the infected blood scandal. The NHS went from being responsible for one of the worst hepatitis C transmission disasters in the country's history to potentially becoming one of the first health systems to eliminate the disease
Given the recent outbreaks of diseases we should have already eliminated here (for other reasons that "we shouldn't discuss")...
I view this as a wonderful "they don't report in and the coroner doesn't check" type of elimination
Meanwhile, the USA is bringing back measles, mumps, rubella, Hep B, and lots of intestinal parasites. Back to the Future! MAGA!
Introducing: Hepatitis C++
I've always found it a bit surprising that we don't all celebrate smallpox elimination day. I think it'd be a great reminder of the victories that humanity has had against the four horsemen.
> Around 50,200 adults are living with hepatitis C, figures for England in 2024 suggest.
> Estimates indicate 84.6% of those living with hepatitis C have been diagnosed - just short of the 90% target.
How do they know there are that many Hep C patients if they haven’t been diagnosed?
Second paraggraph:
> The target of treating 80% of all known cases has already been met, and deaths from the virus have fallen by 36% in the last decade, just short of what is needed by 2030.
What is needed by 2030? There is no mention prior to this statement.
Later:
> NHS England says that since 2015, more than 100,000 people have been diagnosed and treated for hepatitis C, meaning the country is already meeting that target.
Again, what target are we talking about??
Much later:
> Prof Frankie Swords, NHS national medical director, added: "England is now leading the world in the mission to eliminate this disease and on course to beat the WHO's 2030 target, but we are determined to keep up the momentum and finish the job.
Finally a target!
FUCK AI
In America people still die of tetanus, because vaccines are the devil's love juice.
What a funny headline. It has virtually nothing to do with the actual content of the article.
the other side of this is the science behind the NS5B protein and the meds behind the new hep c cures. This is pretty fascinating stuff. In medicine, it's not often we see a cure like this.
This is great news. Healthcare is such an asset in our pockets.
For a second, I thought Hepatitis C was some 1980s C dialect that had memory safety issues.
So will it be replaced by Hepatitis Rust for memory safety? (I'm sorry, and I'll see myself out, thanks)
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How can there not be a single sentence in that article HOW IS IT TREATED
If it requires a vaccine you can be sure HEP C will be kept alive and well via MAHA in the US
okay here is a much better article
* https://www.england.nhs.uk/2026/08/100000-people-receive-tre...
> "Treatment involves a free course of antiviral tablets lasting 8 to 12 weeks, which cures more than 95% of cases."
must be nice to have a government that actually cares about its citizens health, we're still waiting DECADES for that Republican health care plan (other than "just die quietly")
Now everyone is migrating to hepatitis Rust
Literally nothing in the article points to it being eliminated, only reaching a target of diagnosing 90% of the cases, which doesn't do anything to eliminate it when a large number of cases comes from drug users which are unlikely to care very much about it.
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My brain kept reading Erlang and I was pretty confusing
The title shows a lack of understanding. BBC has become really low quality.
Just to understand this: When someone says "country England", do they mean "country" like in "nation", considering England a separate nation, or is it a lapse and they mean UK? Is England usually referred to as a country, or just part of a country?
I usually think of a country as equal to a nation, and as far as I know, Wales and Scotland have not split off yet? Is the term "country" not actually that sharply defined?
EDIT: Thanks people, I just asked a question to better understand the terminology, you know ...
I am glad they’re screening for it. I was born to someone who had the virus, but didn’t know I had Hep C myself until I submitted myself to an exceptionally thorough STI testing panel. I say exceptional, because the standard ones I’d done throughout college and early adulthood do not happen to include that particular test. So I feel a bit lucky to have been able to get diagnosed and treated in my mid-20s, before the disease could do much damage.