Paying price of student days as 60% of Hep C sufferers unaware of infection

The Scottish Government is targeting groups such as those who may have tried drugs as students to come forward for testing for the blood-borne virus.

Currently about 60 per cent of people with the virus in Scotland do not know they have it, risking long-term health problems and possibly passing it to others.

Now a new advertising campaign will urge anyone who thinks they might be at risk from hepatitis C to get tested so they can start treatment which in many cases can cure the virus.

Public Health Minister Shona Robison told The Scotsman that she wanted to see 1,000 people treated for the infection in 2010/11, compared with just 450 in 2007/08. Ultimately, the aim is to get 2,000 people a year in treatment.

The campaign, with radio and newspaper adverts and posters, will use the slogan: "Hepatitis C: We need to know you've got it before it can be cured."

Ms Robison said that figures at the end of 2008 estimated there were 39,000 people living in Scotland who are chronically infected with hepatitis C.

"Of these, 15,500 people, 40 per cent of the total estimated figure, are aware of this diagnosis," she said.

"We know there is a large population out there who are completely unaware that they have hepatitis C. In the early stages of infection it can be pretty silent in nature and it is only later on when someone becomes ill and their liver is affected that you might go to the doctor and be tested.

"The focus is about treating those already infected with the virus, preventing infection among those at risk and trying to get a message around about how to avoid putting yourself at risk."

Injecting drugs and sharing needles is one of the main risk factors for hepatitis C, which can cause chronic liver damage.

But campaigners point out that even those who may have used drugs just once or twice as students could also be carriers.

Others at risk include those who have had unhygienic tattoos or piercings, and anyone who has shared items such as razors with someone with the infection.

People who had NHS blood transfusions before 1991/92, when donations started to be tested for the virus, may also be at risk.

In up to 80 per cent of cases, the virus is completely cleared from the system after treatment.

Petra Wright, Scottish officer at The Hepatitis C Trust, welcomed the new campaign. "Awareness is crucial if we want to stop people dying needlessly of undiagnosed liver disease," she said.

"Recreational drug users from the 1970s and 1980s need to come forward and be tested because they are at significant risk: injecting drugs just once is enough."

Dan Farthing, from Haemophilia Scotland, said:

"Haemophilia Scotland is particularly keen that anyone who received blood products or a blood transfusion before 1991 get themselves tested," he said.

'I was 18 and I stupidly once injected with a boyfriend'

ZOE, from Dunfermline, was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2007 after a routine blood test.

"It was quite a shock. I got married when I was quite young, I had three children and didn't have the lifestyle that you would associate (with hepatitis C]," she said.

Zoe, 48, was asked if she could think of how she might have been exposed to the virus.

"I thought back to when I was 18 and I stupidly once injected with a boyfriend," she said.

"The stigma is that it puts you into being a former injecting drug user. But I wasn't – I was at a party, I was young, I was silly and I think a lot of people in those days dabbled with that sort of thing."

The only symptoms Zoe experienced in the years leading to her diagnosis were tiredness and intolerance to alcohol. But after her diagnosis she did not start treatment immediately.

"I went home and went into shock because I thought I'm infectious and I had been infectious for so long and didn't know it," she said.

But in January 2009, Zoe started a 16-week course of injections and antiviral drugs. In some cases treatment can take up to 48 weeks.

She suffered some side-effects such as tiredness, but is now cleared of the infection.