ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Hepatitis C patients are optimistic about new treatment options.
It’s often called the silent epidemic, but new treatments have the potential to cure patients in just weeks.
Various health centers offer confidential testing, evaluation and treatment for patients in Rochester.
Hepatitis C is an infection of the liver that affects more than three million people in the country.
Nearly 20,000 people die from the virus in the U.S. each year, but doctors say it doesn’t have to be that way.
“It’s really the only virus in the world that we can actually cure, which is really exciting to us,” said Mary Angemare, the Clinical Leader for the Prevention and Primary Care Program at Jordan Health. The old treatments were anywhere from 6 to 12 months with pills and weekly injections. With this new medication, for many people it is as little as one pill a day for 12 weeks.”
Doctors at Jordan Health stress the importance of screening for people who may not know they have the virus.
Any person born between 1945-1965, received donated blood or organs before 1992 or have shared needles should consider getting tested.