Connections Improve Hepatitis C Care for People who are Homeless

Aaron* was shocked when his hepatitis C rapid test came back positive. When he was approached by a nurse and peer worker at the Hutt Street Centre to get tested, he had been pretty sure his results would be ok.

If you’re homeless and have no symptoms, testing for hep C is probably low on the list of priorities. Aaron considered himself pretty clued in about blood-borne virus risk; he’d been injecting drugs for many years and was an expert in technique, always using clean equipment.

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“I’ll have hep C treatment eventually.”

Competing priorities for people who inject drugs

Opioid substitution treatment (OST) clinics are considered ideal locations for providing treatment for people with chronic hepatitis C virus infection who inject drugs, a vital priority group for achieving the goal of HCV elimination. But despite the availability of highly effective treatments with relatively few side effects, treatment uptake is yet to reach the level needed to achieve elimination.

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