A cure for Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C is one of those illnesses you can have for years and not know it — until it starts damaging your body. Untreated hepatitis C can lead to cirrhosis (scarring) of the liver, brain damage, liver disease and liver cancer, and it can take decades to show up. Until recently it has been nearly impossible to cure.

The Department of Veterans Affairs now says in a press release that it has cured 100,000 veterans with hepatitis C.

In the past, treatment involved daily pills and weekly shots for a year, and even that had a low cure rate with bad side effects. Now the new treatment is a pill a day, with fewer side effects, and it takes just weeks. But that’s only if you know you have it. The VA said recently that it has tested 85 percent of veterans who either have hepatitis or are at risk.

Hepatitis is a blood-borne disease with a long list of possible routes of transmission: sharing drug needles, getting a tattoo, sharing a toothbrush, blood-contaminated wounds, blood transfusions before 1992, contact with blood if you’re in the medical field … and those injector guns they used to give vaccines back when we went into the service.

Those injector guns have been a big bone of contention, one they’ve known about for a very long time. Miniscule drops of blood splatter back into the injector, waiting for injection into the next patient. Now the VA has to admit that the injector guns are “biologically possible” as a means of transmission.

Even if you’ve never shared drug needles or gotten a tattoo, you could have hepatitis C and not know it. The rate of veterans who have it is five times the civilian rate.

To learn more, go online to www.hepatitis.va.gov. And contact the VA and ask for the test. Don’t wait.