A combination of two treatments 97% effective in treating hepatitis C and 93% cheaper than current treatments has been discovered in Malaysia.
71 million people are carriers of hepatitis C worldwide, according to World Health Organization (WHO): 400,000 people die from it each year.
Today, the treatments available are extremely expensive. It takes around 28,000 euros for eight to twelve weeks of treatment. A search carried out by the association Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative attests to the effectiveness of a new combination of treatments to treat the disease, much cheaper than the drugs used so far.
$ 300 treatment
Researchers tested the effectiveness of the combination of sofosbuvir and ravidasvir in Malaysia, at a cost of $ 300 for 12 weeks. That is 93% less expensive than current treatments. At the end of the 12-week trial, 97% of the patients were cured, including patients with several risk factors (cirrhosis, seropositive patients, etc.).
Better care to eradicate the disease
These treatments represent a hope to cure more people with the disease. In France, the government wants to eradicate the disease by 2025. For this, French hepatologists recommend opening the prescription of these treatments to general practitioners for certain types of patients: those who have never been treated for the hepatitis C, not infected with HIV, hepatitis B and who have not had cirrhosis. Because 120,000 people are not treated in France according to the French association of hepatologists.
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-1590362612.jpg "In the UK, HIV-positive men see a 70% drop in hepatitis C")
