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Many European countries 'flying blind' in their efforts to eliminate viral hepatitis

Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology volume 14, pages 445–446 (2017)Cite this article

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More people die from viral hepatitis than from HIV, yet the public health response is lacking. The ACHIEVE Coalition urges governments in Europe and elsewhere to improve hepatitis B and hepatitis C monitoring so that a reliable evidence base will be available to guide the drive towards disease elimination.

We find this second point striking for what it says about the global community's ability to track progress against HCV — and also against HBV, as the aforementioned disclaimer applies to the global HBV cascade-of-care estimates as well. The WHO published these data in its first ever Global Hepatitis Report in April 2017 (Ref. 1). The purpose of this Comment is not to take the WHO to task for its work. Instead, we call for national governments to do much more to meet their monitoring obligations in relation to viral hepatitis, which is now responsible for more deaths annually than HIV1.

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Figure 1: The global cascade of care for chronic HCV infection in 2015.

References

  1. World Health Organization. Global Hepatitis Report 2017 (WHO, 2017).

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Author notes

  1. Jeffrey V. Lazarus, Kelly Safreed-Harmon, Massimo Colombo, Tatjana Reic, Eberhard Schatz and Pierre van Damme: ACHIEVE Coalition members: Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Correlation Network, European Association for the Study of the Liver International Liver Foundation, European AIDS Treatment Group, European Liver Patients' Association, Hepatitis B and C Public Policy Association, Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board, World Hepatitis Alliance.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), Hospital Clínic, University of Barcelona, Calle Roselló 132, 4th Floor, Barcelona, ES-08036, Spain

    Jeffrey V. Lazarus & Kelly Safreed-Harmon

  2. CHIP, Rigshospitalet, University of Copenhagen, Øster Alle 56, 5. sal, Copenhagen, DK-2100, Oe, Denmark

    Jeffrey V. Lazarus

  3. Humanitas Hospital, Clinical and Research Center, Via Manzoni 56, Rozzano (Milan), Italy

    Massimo Colombo

  4. European Liver Patients' Association, Rue de la Loi 235, Brussels, 1040, Belgium

    Tatjana Reic

  5. Correlation Network – European Network Social Inclusion and Health, Droogbak 1d, GE Amsterdam, 1013, The Netherlands

    Eberhard Schatz

  6. Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board, Antwerp University, Universiteitsplein 1, Antwerp, B-2610, Belgium

    Pierre van Damme

Authors
  1. Jeffrey V. Lazarus
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  2. Kelly Safreed-Harmon
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  4. Tatjana Reic
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  6. Pierre van Damme
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on behalf of the ACHIEVE Coalition

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeffrey V. Lazarus.

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Competing interests

The ACHIEVE Coalition is enabled by the support of Abbott, Cepheid, Gilead Sciences and MSD. None of the authors received funding for their work on this Comment.

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Lazarus, J., Safreed-Harmon, K., Colombo, M. et al. Many European countries 'flying blind' in their efforts to eliminate viral hepatitis. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol 14, 445–446 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrgastro.2017.98

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