The Hepatitis C Trust would like to thank all who attended our World Hepatitis Day reception event in parliament this morning, in advance of World Hepatitis Day itself on July 28th. The event was a great opportunity to bring together staff from The Hepatitis C Trust – including members of our peer teams from across the country – with supportive parliamentarians and representatives from NHS Operational Delivery Networks, NHS England, pharmaceutical partners in the NHS England hepatitis C elimination deal, and others.
We were grateful to Elliot Colburn MP for supporting and introducing our event, and Mark Gillyon-Powell from NHS England and Professor Philippa Easterbrook from the WHO for speaking to us about the situation with hepatitis C in England and worldwide. We also appreciated seeing public health minister Maggie Throup and members of health minister Gillian Keegan’s team, who spoke to our staff about their work towards hepatitis C elimination.
It was also great to be joined by parliamentarians Dan Carden MP, Peter Dowd MP, Paulette Hamilton MP, Kate Hollern MP, Rachel Hopkins MP, Diana Johnson MP, Baroness Randerson, Naz Shah MP and Jeff Smith MP.
Together, we can celebrate the progress we have seen in recent years towards the 2025 elimination target set by NHS England, while also acknowledging the work still left to be done. A majority of the estimated 81,000 people still living with hepatitis C remain undiagnosed and we still need to prevent new infections, and these must be our priorities in the final stretch towards elimination.