Change Grow Live explains how three of its services have recently achieved micro-elimination of hepatitis C: West Kent, Reading, and Bromley.
When we say a service has micro eliminated hepatitis C, that means it has reached these targets:
- 100% of people using the service have been offered a hepatitis C test.
- 90% of these people have then been tested.
- 75% of people who were diagnosed with hepatitis C have started treatment.
Hitting these targets is a major achievement for each of these services, and for our role in supporting the NHS in its aim to eliminate hepatitis C as a major health concern.
Find out more about their incredible achievements below.
Reading Drug and Alcohol Service
In March 2022, our service in Reading became the first substance misuse service of its size nationally to achieve micro-elimination.
The service’s success was aided by a lot of hard work from Senior Healthcare Assistant Safina Shahin and the whole team, as well as key partnership working with the local hospital, in particular Dean Linzey, and support from Chrissie Guard of the Hep C Trust. The new approach to hepatitis has already been very well received by the people using the service.
Service Manage Lynn Taylor said: “This is an amazing achievement for the people who use our service in Reading. I am incredibly proud of our whole team and particularly thankful to Dean, Safina and the Gilead team who continued to push Hep C testing and treatment to the top of the agenda for Reading, helping people to become healthier and happier and gain more control over the direction of their lives.”
West Kent Drug and Alcohol Wellbeing Service
Following on from Reading, our service in West Kent also hit the same milestone. This made them the first multi-hub service from all providers in England to reach this major achievement.
Lead Nurse Jo Brown said: “When I heard we’d reached micro-elimination, it almost didn’t sink in. Over two years of hard work had come to fruition!
There are so many elements to this journey, from regular meetings with our colleagues in Gilead, the Hep C Trust and King’s College Hospital, to the support of all our management team, nurses, doctors, administrators, keyworkers, volunteers. Our Senior Data Analyst Sarah Bush also played a huge behind-the-scenes role checking the hepatitis C data month in, month out.
We’re a large service over three sites, so we had to keep momentum going. There is definitely healthy competition between the three hubs, so our Service Manager Clare Begent and I used this to our advantage! We set some in house goals and incentives as well as offering our clients a voucher to be tested.
I remember one of the nursing team saying to me over a year ago ‘I want to be able to say that during my career I played a huge part in the eradication of hepatitis C, how brilliant would that be?’”
Read the full blog post here.
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This content was created by Change Grow Live