Egypt’s cheap hepatitis C treatment a big draw for foreign patients
cairo — Like millions in Egypt, Ahmed Nada suffered silently from Hepatitis C. But the country is turning from the world’s most afflicted by the disease to a global destination for those seeking a cure.
Nada, 31, only learned that he carried the virus when he tried to donate blood.
“At first I was very angry,” he said. “I kept thinking whether it was from my previous work as a dentist, or from the barber or from what? I didn’t know.”
Previously, a Hepatitis C infection, even when diagnosed, would have gone untreated or simply been managed.
But a cheap new drug produced in Egypt since 2015 and a government programme to eliminate the condition meant Nada could be easily cured. Egypt has the highest prevalence of Hepatitis C infection in the world, an epidemic that started with a government programme for mass vaccinations with unsterilised syringes in the 1950s.
Seven per cent of people aged between 15 and 59 have an active infection.
The blood-borne virus can cause serious damage to the liver before being detected, and can be fatal.
Since 2006, Egypt has carried out surveys to determine the epidemic’s spread and negotiated cheaper drugs from abroad. However, its first breakthrough came when the US-based Gilead Sciences pharmaceutical company developed Sovaldi, a cure approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2013. Egypt negotiated a deal to reduce the price of a course of treatment from $84,000 or $1,000 a pill, to a fraction of that.
The National Committee for Control of Viral Hepatitis set up a website so sufferers could access the drug.
The next breakthrough came in 2015 when Egypt began to manufacture the drug locally, reducing the price for the full course to just $83, the committee’s executive director Kadry Al Saeed said.
Waiting lists for the cure ended in July 2016, and the government is searching for an estimated three million Egyptians who carry the virus without knowing it. —