Good news for some Canadians

[Salal]

After I underwent something like 6 months of "qualifying rounds" to get approved for HCV treatment, the govt. of BC decides to throw the door wide open to treatment. Anyone in BC (and Ontario also, this article says) with chronic HCV can get treatment - to heck with the cost to the govt. - for the obvious reason that it will cost the govt. more to treat people for liver failure, liver cancer, and other diseases HCV can be the underlying cause of decades after infection.  It is about time!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/hep-c-dix-announcement-2018-1.4574365

[Mugwump]

The really interesting part of this equation is that the bargaining power of the provinces can be combined to keep the costs at bay with the drug companies. All we have to do is hang the sword of generics and competition with publicly funded drugs over their head and bingo they will see the light. I doubt that HCV will be completely eliminated the way we have with a few other diseases that can be vaccinated against, but it certainly can now effectively be controlled.

As to the costs involved, this is my personal experience with untreated HCV:
I underwent expensive thyroid treatment and a plethora of expensive tests for all sorts of problems for years before HCV was a detectable and understood condition. And unbeknown to the medical professional and therefore myself, most of these debilitating problems if not all were related to what HCV was doing to me over the years. Prolonged and chronic weakness and flu like symptoms at times for no known reason, disrupted sleep patterns, sudden weird short allergic like reactions of unknown origins. Because of these weird problems all the way back to my mid 20 I began losing gainful employment and have been at times branded by some as unemployable because of chronic HCV. In essence I was an unproductive person for periods in my life largely because of what chronic long term HCV infection did to me over the years.

Add to all that:

I have personally known 3 people who have had liver transplants, one in his early 40s two in their 50s only one of them is still alive. In addition to that 4 who have died of liver cancer and most disconcertingly one young father who committed suicide because of an HCV diagnosis. My wife has know others where she has worked for over 30 years, my relatives all know others who have either died or had liver transplants in similar numbers, all because of HCV,

The only conclusion that these facts bring to mind is that: the long term costs to society of HCV going untreated are devastating and will continue to become much greater in financial and social terms. Whereas early treatment is economic and socially sensible policy and will lead eventually to effective control of the disease and the future costs of what HCV going untreated will certainly burden upon us all.

Today because I am finally free of HCV I am more employable at age 65 than I was when I was in the so called "prime of life".

Finally financial and social reason has prevailed and a great victory in effectively controlling HCV once and for all is close at hand!