Mr. Lawrence Murphy:

I thank the Chairman and the committee for allowing me to speak here today. I am a project worker with the Hepatitis C Partnership. Briefly, this is the story of my lived experience.

I first got my bloods tested in the late 1990s. I was not even thinking about hepatitis C at that time. It was not on my radar at all. To be honest, I only got tested because there was mass testing at the addiction services, which I attended and which I am thankful for today. I had no idea that I would get a positive result for what was at the time a lifelong illness. After the initial anger and shock, I put it to the back of my mind. I did not take much heed of it for a while. The way I was told was that I had not got HIV; I had only got hepatitis C. The information I was given was that it was a slowly progressing illness and it would not affect me for ten or 20 years.

In the circumstances I was in at the time, there was huge stigma and a lack of information. There was minimum support around getting diagnosed, living with it and protecting others. I did not know anything about hepatitis C at the time. All I knew was that you do not tell anyone you have it and you do not talk about it. Seven or eight years passed before I began to think of addressing it. I realised that the hepatitis C diagnosis I had been ignoring was not a good thing to have. I suddenly felt as if there was an intruder in my body. I was in a different chapter of my life then and I began to comprehend the severity of living with this potentially life-threatening illness. I sought out information on the disease and its treatment. My fears around passing it on to loved ones were in the forefront of my mind. It was a dirty and uneasy feeling, and it began to haunt me.

One of the big issues with hepatitis C was that, initially, I did not have any symptoms and it was easy for me to put it to the back of my mind. The realisation was simple. Hepatitis C was attacking my body, whether I was showing signs or not. I had begun to start thinking about my well-being and quality of life. I started to appreciate life and I wanted to keep going down this positive path. The stigma of hepatitis C is very difficult. You do not look sick. It can be easy to almost forget about it until something happens, which for me would be when I was brushing my teeth or if I had an accident and any cuts. I would react badly and would not want anyone to come near me. I felt contagious and like an outcast.

I began treatment with the first batch of direct-acting antiviral drugs, DAAs. I successfully completed this treatment in 2014. When I got my first negative sustained virologic response, SVR, which meant there was no virus present in my blood, I felt relieved. It was hard to believe that it was actually over. It was surreal. I asked myself if it could be real that I was actually cured, and that I no longer felt infectious or a risk to others. I did not realise at the time that I could use my lived experience as a positive tool to support others in similar circumstances. In my current role within the Hepatitis C Partnership, and my previous role working directly to support individuals accessing treatment as an outreach peer worker, I drew upon these experiences to relate to individuals in an empathetic way to offer support and encouragement for others choosing treatment.

I thank the committee for its invitation to attend today's session and for the opportunity to share my lived experience.