France will provide access to hepatitis C treatment with direct-acting antivirals to everyone diagnosed with hepatitis C from September 2016, and will begin to provide treatment to everyone with stage 2 fibrosis immediately, health minister Marisol Touraine announced at the end of May.
Up to 230,000 people in France with hepatitis C could be treated under the new rules, the French health ministry has said, but Marisol Touraine said that the prices paid by the French health system for direct-acting antivirals must be renegotiated.
She pointed out that the indications for prescribing of drugs has expanded, increasing the size of the market, and competitor products are becoming available. She also noted that other European countries had been able to use the French price negotiations to achieve favourable deals for high-volume prescribing. In Spain and Portugal prices of 13,000 euros are believed to have been achieved in confidential deals, in which governments pay nothing for people who are not cured and the cost of treatment is the same regardless of duration.
The Irish health minister has also announced an increase in the number of people who will receive treatment for hepatitis C. A further 1500 people will be able to receive treatment as a result of widening the criteria for treatment. Previously, Ireland’s national plan for treatment prioritised people with end-stage liver disease, or compensated cirrhosis at higher risk for decompensation, and people falling outside these groups at high risk of progression including people with high HCV RNA or with HIV co-infection. Treatment criteria will be further expanded until Ireland has provided treatment to somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000 people with hepatitis C, with the aim of eliminating the infection in Ireland by 2026.
Indian’s Punjab state government has announced it will be the first to provide free treatment for hepatitis C in state hospitals, through a special fund launched last week.
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