The news carried in your paper of Nov 21 about the availability of an oral drug for the treatment of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is indeed great news for patients of the disease in Pakistan. The US Federal Department of Agriculture-approved drug will be sold by a Pakistani pharmaceutical company at a discount of 98pc compared to its price in the US.

The drug has a success rate of over 80pc with no side-effects and is, therefore, preferable to the previously available injection-based Interferon treatment.

There are about 10m HCV patients in Pakistan and another 280,000 acquire the disease annually.

The reason for the alarmingly high incidence and rate of HCV infection in Pakistan is due to transfusion of unscreened blood and its products, use of infected instruments, needles, etc., by unqualified medical and dental practitioners and drug addicts.

Since the preventive HCV vaccine has not been developed yet, the only way to avoid infection is to transfuse safe blood, use sealed disposable syringes and sterilised surgical instruments.

There is no permanent cure for HCV.

Treatment only kills the active virus to prevent further liver damage but the person remains a carrier for life.

Asif Jah

Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 26th, 2014