Dear friends and colleagues,
July 28, the World Hepatitis Day launched the first large-scale testing campaign on Hepatitis C among military personnel and members of other security agencies that are involved in conducting anti-terrorist operations. The campaign is held across most of Ukraine with the support of ICF “International HIV / AIDS Alliance in Ukraine” and the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
NGO “Gay-alliance” has decided as in previous years, to join the event on 28 July. The city Bila Tserkva, in the Kiev region in the territory of the military unit A3122 we organized the rapid testing for hepatitis C among active and demobilized members ATO. They were men mostly from 29 to 38. Also our medical staff was provided pre-test and post-test counseling and distributed information and educational materials about hepatitis C, interviewers conducted a survey of everyone who decides to take the test. In total 70 people were tested and, fortunately, was not detected any positive result on HCV!
Our employees also helped to conduct rapid diagnosis of July 30 in Kyiv on the territory of the Central Military Clinical Hospital Ministry of Defence. It tested 21 participants ATO revealed 5 positive for HCV.
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Why is it urgent? In fact, Ukraine lives in the state of military conflict with the involvement of hundreds of military servants, civilians and healthcare workers. The risk of rapid aggravation of the viral hepatitis epidemic in Ukraine rises significantly due to the big numbers of wounded people, deterioration of sanitary, social and economic conditions of life of many Ukrainians in the East of the country. No HCV screening is stipulated for the mobilized military servants. Apart from that, in the combat areas there are almost no means to prevent viral infections.
In the recent years, the issue of viral hepatitis is becoming more and more urgent. According to the estimates of the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 150 million people all over the world are infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV). Unfortunately, we still do not have reliable statistics for Ukraine – the only official number that we can operate is 43.5 thousand registered patients with hepatitis C, while WHO estimates that in Ukraine up to 8% of people live with HCV, which makes approximately 3 million people. The specific feature of hepatitis C is its ability to progress in latent form for a long period of time. Thus an infected person may have no manifestations of the disease but spread the virus to others. The risk to get infected with hepatitis is ten times higher than with HIV, and the disease is often diagnosed at the stage of liver cancer or cirrhosis.
