Minister Anthony promises free testing, treatment for Hepatitis C to be available later this year

Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, disclosed that later this year, the Government will be
launching a programme to treat persons suffering from Hepatitis C. he said that treatment is
costly, as such this initiative will unburden persons requiring it.
“Right now, we are in the process of launching a programme where all those persons who have
been detected with Hep C, that we’ll be able to provide them with treatment and once they use it
appropriately generally it cures about 99 percent of those patients,” Dr Anthony said. The
minister noted that that when persons donate blood, that blood is screened, including checking
for Hepatitis C and B and the results have shown a high number of persons living with the virus.
“We detect a lot of Hep C and B, especially when people come to donate blood…and if we find
the blood to contain Hep C virus those patients generally, we were not able to treat those
patients,” Minister Anthony revealed. The health minister disclosed that his ministry has already
compiled a data base of persons infected with the virus so that they can have access to treatment.
Minister Anthony is appealing to persons who believe they might have the virus to get tested.
“We’ll be providing those testing and so that we can all work together to first of all treat those
patients and eventually we are hopeful that we can eliminate Hep C from Guyana,” he warned.
Dr. Anthony disclosed further that health officials are currently crafting guidelines with regards
treatment.
“If the physicians do not know how to use the medications, we are currently in the process of
developing Hep C treatment guidelines and we’ll be training you, we’ll be releasing those
guidelines so that once you get those patients, you can access the medications,” Dr. Anthony
stressed. He added that the Government, through the health ministry will continue its efforts to
eliminate a number of illnesses from the country, including Hepatitis.