Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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1499. To ask the Minister for Health the steps that he will take to ensure that existing policy barriers are removed to ensure that Ireland honours its commitment to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030, in particular the requirement that patients need to be engaged with opioid substitution to be treated in the community or by their general practitioner and the barriers to community pharmacists managing and dispensing hepatitis C medications; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [29468/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Hepatitis C virus is a major cause of liver disease worldwide with an estimated 80 million people chronically infected. Ireland views Hepatitis C as a public health threat and is committed to the WHO target of eliminating it by 2030.

The HSE established a National Hepatitis C Treatment Programme (NHCTP) in 2015 and began the process of providing treatment for Hepatitis C using Directly Acting Antivirals to patients prioritised according to clinical need.

Since 2016, the HSE in its National Service Plans has committed to the continued implementation of a multi annual public health plan for the therapeutic treatment across a range of healthcare settings to all persons living with Hepatitis C in Ireland. The NHCTP goal is to make hepatitis C a rare disease in Ireland by 2026, and in accordance with the WHO target, to eliminate it in Ireland by 2030. In order to achieve this, the NHCTP has been allocated funding of €25m each year.

The NHCTP works in partnership with the Irish Prison Service nationally, and with Hospital and community teams, to provide outreach to all prisoners that require treatment for Hepatitis C.

Since its inception in 2015, the NHCTP has treated over 6,600 patients with Hepatitis C virus. The focus has been in the east of the country as the evidence to date has indicated that this is where the highest population needing Hepatitis C treatment has resided. The NHCTP’s Community Prescribing Project has been developed to widen the availability of the Hepatitis C treatment to enable GPs to treat people who are on opioid substitution treatment across the country. The Community Prescribing Project will expand in the future to be available for people not on the opioid substitution treatment scheme.

In addition, an online home testing option is currently being scoped by the NHCTP and will expand the testing and treatment to people who are currently undiagnosed. It is anticipated that this will be available later this year. The NHCTP will utilise all possible treatment options and the medical needs of individuals identified will dictate which care pathway is best. Treatment will remain free to people regardless of where the service is delivered. The NHCTP will develop a communication plan to support the rollout of the home testing service later this year. This communication plan will also aim to destigmatise the testing and treatment associated with Hepatitis C.

The NHCTP reports that it is very much still on track to eliminate the Hepatitis C virus in Ireland by 2030.

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) conducted a Health Technology Assessment regarding the feasibility of national birth cohort screening for the Hepatitis C virus. HIQA published the results of that Health Technology Assessment in 2021. It recommended a national program of birth cohort testing for Hepatitis C for people in Ireland born between 1965 and 1985.

In collaboration with HIQA, the NHCTP is currently carrying out a national sero-prevalence study to estimate the prevalence of Hepatitis C virus infection in that Irish birth cohort (i.e., those born between 1965 and 1985). The study is being carried out using residual sera from tests sent in by general practitioners (GPs). To date 6,000 samples have been analysed and the results are expected by the end of July 2022. This study will give indications of what percentage of the population have the Hepatitis C virus, but all indications are that the remaining number of people to be treated are low.