Awareness of hepatitis C status ‘low among drug users’

A large proportion of people who inject drugs are unaware of having hepatitis C, according to a new report from Public Health England.

The government's Shooting Up report is designed to highlight the changing patterns of injecting drug use, and the impact local interventions are having on rates of infection, across the UK.

While uptake of testing for hepatitis C among injecting drug users is high at 83 percent, it was indicated that 48 percent of these people were unaware of having the disease, even though rates of HIV among this group remain low at one percent.

Dr Fortune Ncube, consultant epidemiologist and head of the bloodborne virus section at Public Health England, said: "The most effective way to decrease levels of infection among people who inject drugs is through the provision of quality interventions such as needle and syringe programmes, opiate substitution therapy and other drug treatment services."

Risky behaviours involved in drug injections, such as the sharing of needles, puts users at an increased risk of getting HIV, hepatitis C, B and other infections.

The report has indicated that progress is being made on this front, as sharing and reusing needles and syringes in England has fallen from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2014.