The Health Department and Hep Free NYC released the Plan to Eliminate Viral Hepatitis as a Major Public Health Threat in New York City by 2030 (Viral Hepatitis Elimination Plan), a set of strategies to reduce the number of hepatitis C infections, improve the health of people with hepatitis B and C, and reduce health inequities related to viral hepatitis infection in New York City.
Read the New York City Viral Hepatitis Elimination Plan Viral Hepatitis Elimination Plan Goals
TO CONTINUE READING: https://mailchi.mp/hepfree.nyc/viralhepatitiseliminationplan?e=4319dc4b7f
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Heavy alcohol use during the pandemic was linked to a rise in waiting list registrations and transplants due to alcohol-related hepatitis
December 13, 2021 • By Sukanya Charuchandra, Hep Magazine Liver transplants and waiting list registrations due to alcohol-related liver disease (ALD) increased during the COVID-19 pandemic in association with a rise in retail alcohol sales, according to study results published in JAMA Network Open. Alcohol drinking has soared during the pandemic. Alcohol-related liver disease, driven by excessive alcohol consumption, can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer and liver failure. Maia Anderson, MD, of Michigan Medicine, and colleagues looked at national changes in the number of people with ALD who were put on a waiting list or received a transplant and the potential links to alcohol sales in recent years. TO CONTINUE: https://www.hepmag.com/article/need-liver-transplants-due-alcohol-use-spiked-covid19-pandemic Krishen Samuel
Published:10 December 2021, INFOHEP Access to direct-acting antivirals to cure hepatitis C has slashed incidence rates for groups most affected in Australia. Among gay and bisexual men living with HIV, incidence fell by 78% in 2019 when compared to 2015, the year before direct-acting antiviral treatment became widely available. A similar trend in hepatitis C infections was seen for HIV-negative men taking PrEP, with an 80% decline in 2019 compared to 2016. BackgroundHepatitis C disproportionately affects gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men living with HIV. A smaller number of HIV-negative gay and bisexual men – particularly those taking HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) – are also affected. Common risk factors include condomless anal sex, sexualised drug use, sharing injecting and other drug equipment, fisting and sharing sex toys. The introduction of direct-acting antivirals has simplified and improved hepatitis C treatment significantly – over 90% of people who take them are fully cured of the infection. This contrasts with prior treatments, which lasted for a year, produced many side effects, and only resulted in a cure rate of 50% to 60%. Additionally, the efficacy of direct-acting antivirals is not affected by HIV status. Based on the success of direct-acting antivirals to reduce rates of hepatitis C, the World Health Organization set a goal of 80% incidence reduction by 2030, relative to a 2015 baseline. With targeted resources, this can be achieved faster in highly affected subgroups, such as gay and bisexual men living with HIV. There are studies that have looked at national-level changes in hepatitis C incidence among gay and bisexual men with HIV after introducing direct-acting antivirals. Some examples include France, the Netherlands, Switzerland and England. However, there have been no published studies looking at hepatitis C incidence among HIV-negative PrEP users. In Australia, both medications became broadly available from 2016 after the government subsidised direct-acting antivirals, with no restrictions on treatment based on liver disease stage, substance use, or reinfection status. The treatment could also be prescribed by nonspecialist primary care providers, and was made available in general practices and sexual health clinics. PrEP, which was initially available to 7,500 people (predominantly gay and bisexual men) through implementation trials in 2016, also became widely accessible in 2018 through government subsidisation and general practitioner prescriptions among gay and bisexual men with HIVA total of 6,744 men with HIV were included in the incidence analysis, comprising 33,150 person-years of follow-up with 290 new hepatitis C infections for the period. This produced an overall incidence of 1.03 per 100 person-years, with the highest incidence in 2010 (2.12 per 100 person-years) and the lowest in 2019 (0.22 per 100 person-years). As direct-acting antivirals only became widely available in 2016, 2015 was used as the baseline comparison year. Incidence declined in all subsequent years, falling by 60% in 2017, 45% in 2018 and 78% in 2019, relative to 2015. There was no significant change in the overall incidence trend between 2009 and 2015 and between 2016 and 2019. But a distinct difference was present between 2015 and 2016, indicating the importance of direct-acting antivirals in the incidence decline between the two periods. TO CONTINUE READING: http://www.infohep.org/Australia-on-track-to-eliminate-hepatitis-C-among-gay-and-bisexual-men-before-2030/page/3550464/?utm_source=NAM-Email-Promotion&utm_medium=conference-bulletin&utm_campaign=English&utm_source=infohep-english&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2021-12-21 We are New York district attorneys and health officials. Here’s why New York City is opening sites for people to safely use drugs.
Darcel ClarkBronx District AttorneyCy VanceManhattan District AttorneyEric GonzalezBrooklyn District AttorneyDave A. ChokshiNYC Health CommissionerMelinda KatzQueens District AttorneyPosted on December 15, 2021, at 12:04 p.m. ET Two weeks ago, New York City became the first city in the nation to open two overdose prevention centers, located in Manhattan. Already, 25 overdoses have been averted — 25 people who are alive today thanks to these centers. Now we are calling on the Biden administration to formally authorize overdose prevention centers in the US. Overdose prevention centers are supervised, hygienic spaces for people who use drugs to do so safely, while also providing harm reduction, physical health, and behavioral health services. Every neighborhood in every community has experienced the tragedy of the overdose epidemic. Nationally, over 100,000 Americans died of an overdose between April 2020 to April 2021. In New York City, 2,062 people died of an overdose in 2020, the highest number of deaths since reporting began 20 years ago. The spread of fentanyl — a dangerous, synthetic opioid 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine and the primary driver of the rise in overdoses — exponentially increases the need for even more overdose prevention innovation. Thirty years of research conducted across 100 sites on three continents has demonstrated the efficacy of overdose prevention centers. There has never been a single overdose death at any site. Participants are provided with basic human needs day after day: a smile, a sandwich, or a shower. Over time, trust is built between participants and clinical staff, which leads to participants beginning substance use disorder treatment and referrals to healthcare and other social services. In addition, research shows overdose prevention centers reduce public drug use, syringe litter, and drug-related crime in surrounding neighborhoods. They can also function as safe havens for women who use drugs, reducing violence against women associated with street-based substance use. We believe the overdose prevention centers in New York City will be a model for other cities to follow. Biden recently embraced harm reduction, becoming the first president to include it in his drug policy priorities. In another first, Congress appropriated $30 million in the American Rescue Plan to be provided to state, local, and tribal governments and organizations for overdose prevention and harm reduction services. TO CONTINUE: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/dadarcelclark/new-york-overdose-prevention-centers?fbclid=IwAR0hZB_TZea_5_Xreys1HYn2vX2abltVm-AYdQgPPZ8iIzSIOyYC3ZquVBE What does it mean to be ‘in community’? How do we do this in the day to day and in the contexts of multiple pandemics, settler colonialism, racism, sexism, the war on drugs, economic inequity, homophobia? What does it mean to create a collective that sustains and moves to act?
By Tamara Oyola-Santiago ' + Bronx Móvil + La Maraña collective' The following two essays, which reflect Bronx Móvil’s platform for action centred in radical love, were previously published in the zine Harm Reduction is Not a Metaphor. “Harm Reduction on the streets? Love is love.” In front of a shelter in upper Manhattan as we distributed food and harm reduction supplies, a participant welcomed and thanked us with that sentiment one night in May 2020. It was a week before George Floyd’s murder, New York City was already in crisis in the middle of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fragility of the city’s social services sector was being fully revealed more and more everyday. This was not news to us, and neither were the solutions. As social bubbles and pods were being named as innovative in mainstream media such arrangements were already thriving in our communities pre-pandemic and grew exponentially as the months passed. Mutual aid networks exist in our communities; in fact, they are part of the fabric of BIPOC and poverty-impacted communities often marginalized and deemed hard to reach. And so we—Bronx Móvil, a collective of people impacted by the HIV crisis, who have lost loved ones to HIV and the opioid overdose crisis, who use drugs, who have experienced housing insecurity, who are Puerto Rican, Bronx residents, Queer, migrants—hit the streets with naloxone, harm reduction bags, safer smoking kits, syringes, food, water, socks, juice, PPE. The donations via churches, sewing collectives, community partners and organizers, and other harm reduction organizations flew in. The networks, la familia, grew. And we did our best to share what we were being given. Previously on March 20th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered residents to stay home and all non-essential businesses to close; harm reduction nonprofit organizations at the forefront of services for people who are unsheltered and unhoused were grappling with an impacted workforce and many closed as well. Limited services meant that amid a historic pandemic, there was no water for bathing or drinking or laundry, no case management, no HIV or Hep C testing, and limited ongoing medication-assisted treatment. Also, medical appointments were cancelled and some community kitchens became grab and gos with meal bags. Our participants understood that the shelter system they were being “pushed into,” which was already experienced as a violent one, was also now a petri dish of the novel coronavirus. Resources, funding, and production lines transitioned to personal protective equipment and vaccine development. The impact was felt deeply. We assume syringe production was also diverted, because there were simply not enough syringes available for basic harm reduction: a new syringe for each and every shot. TO CONTINUE:https://www.artseverywhere.ca/communities-of-drug-use/ The following two essays, which reflect Bronx Móvil’s platform for action centred in radical love, were previously published in the zine Harm Reduction is Not a Metaphor. “Harm Reduction on the streets? Love is love.” In front of a shelter in upper Manhattan as we distributed food and harm reduction supplies, a participant welcomed and thanked us with that sentiment one night in May 2020. It was a week before George Floyd’s murder, New York City was already in crisis in the middle of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fragility of the city’s social services sector was being fully revealed more and more everyday. This was not news to us, and neither were the solutions. As social bubbles and pods were being named as innovative in mainstream media such arrangements were already thriving in our communities pre-pandemic and grew exponentially as the months passed. Mutual aid networks exist in our communities; in fact, they are part of the fabric of BIPOC and poverty-impacted communities often marginalized and deemed hard to reach. And so we—Bronx Móvil, a collective of people impacted by the HIV crisis, who have lost loved ones to HIV and the opioid overdose crisis, who use drugs, who have experienced housing insecurity, who are Puerto Rican, Bronx residents, Queer, migrants—hit the streets with naloxone, harm reduction bags, safer smoking kits, syringes, food, water, socks, juice, PPE. The donations via churches, sewing collectives, community partners and organizers, and other harm reduction organizations flew in. The networks, la familia, grew. And we did our best to share what we were being given. Previously on March 20th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered residents to stay home and all non-essential businesses to close; harm reduction nonprofit organizations at the forefront of services for people who are unsheltered and unhoused were grappling with an impacted workforce and many closed as well. Limited services meant that amid a historic pandemic, there was no water for bathing or drinking or laundry, no case management, no HIV or Hep C testing, and limited ongoing medication-assisted treatment. Also, medical appointments were cancelled and some community kitchens became grab and gos with meal bags. Our participants understood that the shelter system they were being “pushed into,” which was already experienced as a violent one, was also now a petri dish of the novel coronavirus. Resources, funding, and production lines transitioned to personal protective equipment and vaccine development. The impact was felt deeply. We assume syringe production was also diverted, because there were simply not enough syringes available for basic harm reduction: a new syringe for each and every shot. The following two essays, which reflect Bronx Móvil’s platform for action centred in radical love, were previously published in the zine Harm Reduction is Not a Metaphor. “Harm Reduction on the streets? Love is love.” In front of a shelter in upper Manhattan as we distributed food and harm reduction supplies, a participant welcomed and thanked us with that sentiment one night in May 2020. It was a week before George Floyd’s murder, New York City was already in crisis in the middle of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fragility of the city’s social services sector was being fully revealed more and more everyday. This was not news to us, and neither were the solutions. As social bubbles and pods were being named as innovative in mainstream media such arrangements were already thriving in our communities pre-pandemic and grew exponentially as the months passed. Mutual aid networks exist in our communities; in fact, they are part of the fabric of BIPOC and poverty-impacted communities often marginalized and deemed hard to reach. And so we—Bronx Móvil, a collective of people impacted by the HIV crisis, who have lost loved ones to HIV and the opioid overdose crisis, who use drugs, who have experienced housing insecurity, who are Puerto Rican, Bronx residents, Queer, migrants—hit the streets with naloxone, harm reduction bags, safer smoking kits, syringes, food, water, socks, juice, PPE. The donations via churches, sewing collectives, community partners and organizers, and other harm reduction organizations flew in. The networks, la familia, grew. And we did our best to share what we were being given. Previously on March 20th, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered residents to stay home and all non-essential businesses to close; harm reduction nonprofit organizations at the forefront of services for people who are unsheltered and unhoused were grappling with an impacted workforce and many closed as well. Limited services meant that amid a historic pandemic, there was no water for bathing or drinking or laundry, no case management, no HIV or Hep C testing, and limited ongoing medication-assisted treatment. Also, medical appointments were cancelled and some community kitchens became grab and gos with meal bags. Our participants understood that the shelter system they were being “pushed into,” which was already experienced as a violent one, was also now a petri dish of the novel coronavirus. Resources, funding, and production lines transitioned to personal protective equipment and vaccine development. The impact was felt deeply. We assume syringe production was also diverted, because there were simply not enough syringes available for basic harm reduction: a new syringe for each and every shot. Many young people with HCV remained untreated in 2019 By Lisa Holden, Healio Gastroenterology12/2/2021 In 2019, only 32% of children and youth who had tested positive for hepatitis C in British Columbia, Canada, had initiated treatment, according to data presented at The Liver Meeting Digital Experience.
“The specific clinical and treatment experiences of young people living with HCV infection are limited in HCV research, so care cascades are a useful tool that can visualize the journey of individuals across the stages of illness, care and treatment. And these are useful for identifying gaps in progress across the stages of care and ultimately can inform public health programming to optimize care services,” Dahn Jeong, MSc, a PhD candidate at the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia said during a presentation. “The aim of this study was first to construct the HCV cascade of care for persons aged younger than 30 years living in British Columbia in 2019, and we also aimed to characterize the progression of young people along the cascade.” Jeong and colleagues analyzed data from the British Columbia Hepatitis Testers Cohort, which includes all individuals tested for or reported as an HCV case in British Columbia since 1990, on people aged younger than 30 years in 2019 who had been diagnosed with HCV. These data were also linked with administrative data on medical visits and prescription drugs from the British Columbia Ministry of Health databases . The HCV cascade of care was defined as estimated HVC prevalence, antibody diagnosis, RNA testing, genotyping, treatment initiation and sustained virologic response (SVR). The proportion of children and youth were estimated in each stage. TO CONTINUE-https://www.healio.com/news/gastroenterology/20211202/many-young-people-with-hcv-remained-untreated-in-2019 |
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