Canadian Safety Reporter

CSR | April 2015 | News ©2015 Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-7798-2810-4 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher (Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business). Canadian Safety Reporter is part of the Canadian HR Reporter group of publications: • Canadian HR Reporter — www.hrreporter.com • Canadian Occupational Safety magazine — www.cos-mag.com • Canadian Payroll Reporter — www.payroll-reporter.com • Canadian Employment Law Today — www.employmentlawtoday.com • Canadian Labour Reporter — www.labour-reporter.com See carswell.com for information Safety Reporter Canadian www.safety-reporter.com Published 12 times a year by Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. Subscription rate: $129 per year Customer Service Tel: (416) 609-3800 (Toronto) (800) 387-5164 (outside Toronto) Fax: (416) 298-5106 E-mail: carswell.customerrelations @thomsonreuters.com Website: www.carswell.com One Corporate Plaza 2075 Kennedy Road Toronto, Ontario, Canada M1T 3V4 Director, Carswell Media Karen Lorimer Publisher John Hobel Associate Publisher/Managing Editor Todd Humber and be unknowingly transmit- ted to others. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 130 to 150 million people glob- ally have a chronic hepatitis C infection and 350,000 to 500,000 people die each year from relat- ed liver diseases. Many baby boomers could have the disease, according to Pernessa Seele, founder and CEO of the not-for-profit orga- nization the Balm in Gilead in Richmond, Va. "We have to advocate that people get tested for hepatitis C, especially those born between 1945 and 1965, because usually they're not paying attention to (it) and if they do have symptoms of it, they think it's something else, they don't think it's a blood transfusion they had in 1970 or they got something while they were a nurse in a hospital in the 70s… the virus really is able to stay in your body for a long, long time. So many people, one in three, they have the virus and they don't have a clue that they have it. "Many baby boomers got blood transfusions before the blood supply became safe in the 90s; many baby boomers are Vietnam vets… it's a very preva- lent virus. So bad needles you get in tattoos, barber shops, beauty parlours — this virus is very prevalent in our world." Adults born between 1945 and 1975 have the highest risk of having undiagnosed hepatitis C, yet a November 2014 survey of more than 1,000 Canadians by the Canadian Liver Foundation found more than 75 per cent of the respondents had not been tested for the deadly disease or didn't know if they had. Also at risk are immigrant populations from Europe, born between 1945 and 1970, who un- derwent mass vaccination cam- paigns under conditions that were less than sterile, said Mor- ris Sherman, chairman of the Canadian Liver Foundation and liver specialist at Toronto Gen- eral Hospital. Faulty medical procedures can also be to blame, he said, citing as examples Japan and Egypt when people were treated for a parasitic infection. "The vast majority of people with hepatitis C have no symp- toms at all, so the disease doesn't call attention to itself until it's very late in the day," he said. "As long as you catch hepatitis C be- fore you get to very heavy scar- ring and cirrhosis, the outlook is excellent. Even those who had sort of moderately heavy scar- ring in the liver that's short of cirrhosis, if you can get rid of the virus, they'll do very, very well." Treatment options Fortunately, newer drugs on the market can cure hepatitis C relatively easily. The only catch? They're expensive. And not many health plans, be they pri- vate or provincial, cover the cost. But it's hoped that will change, as seen recently when Prince Ed- ward Island announced in Feb- ruary it would launch a $5-mil- lion hepatitis C management strategy that includes the drug Holkira Pak by AbbVie. The mainstay of therapy has been a long-acting form of inter- feron injected once a week, said Sean Hosein, science and medi- cine editor at CATIE, a Canadian source for HIV and hepatitis C information. But interferons can have negative side effects such as irritability, insomnia, fatigue, depression and low energy. But with new oral therapies, there are fewer side effects and people can take just one pill once or twice a day for 12 or 24 weeks, he said. "We're hearing of an enormous increase in po- tency and success; you're getting between 90 to 100 per cent suc- cess rates overall, particularly in people who have minimal liver injury from hepatitis." There's some variation de- pending upon which particular subtype of virus a patient is in- fected with, but the bottom line is there's now excellent treat- ment for most patients that will get rid of the virus completely, said Sherman. "The drugs are extremely well- tolerated and the only problem with them is the cost." Prices can range from $800 to $1,000 per pill with "the politics of health care" involved, said Seele. "The cost is horrendous and that's why we have to mo- bilize our communities to ad- vocate… to the pharmaceutical companies to make these drugs available as well as to health-care providers to give the test and then make the drugs available, (and) our legislators to make the drug available and affordable. "Employers can mandate that their employees get tested for hepatitis C and… if they are pos- itive, provide the treatment as a part of their health-care plan." Now that there's more com- petition on the market, with the three main companies supplying a drug being Gilead, AbbVie and Janssen, it's likely one will be on formularies later this year, said Hosein. A lot of private health-care plans don't cover the host, he said, and even if they do, they make patients "jump through all these hoops," he said. "I really wish the private plans would also negotiate more aggressively than they have in the past because it's to their advantage to get the drug listed because your patient, who has a chronic illness, can now be cured, in most cases, in 12 weeks, with all oral ther- apy. They will need a minimal amount of time off work, if any… and when they're cured, then you don't have to worry about all these other hospitalizations that come if you don't treat hepatitis that end up costing everybody a lot of money." Hepatitis C < pg. 1 Prices can range from $800 to $1,000 per pill "Employers can mandate that employees get tested... and provide treatment as part of their health-care plan." Lead Editor Sarah Dobson Assistant Editor Mallory Hendry (On Leave) Assistant Editor Anastasiya Jogal Contributing Editors Liz Foster Sabrina Nanji Liz Bernier Jeffrey R. Smith Marketing Manager Mohammad Ali mm.ali@thomsonreuters.com (416) 609-5866 Circulation Co-ordinator Keith Fulford keith.fulford@thomsonreuters.com (416) 649-9585

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