The Hepatitis C Trust was part of a multi-discipline team honoured with the NHS Wales Team Culture Award at a ceremony last night.
Alongside colleagues from Betsi Cadwaladr NHS (BCUHB), Public Health Wales and HMPPS, the NHS Wales Awards recognised the team for their work on micro-elimination at HMP Berwyn.
HMP Berwyn, based in Wrexham, is the UK’s largest prison. Hepatitis C testing rates were low at the prison due to stigma, lack of knowledge, and time constraints.
The project began on World Hepatitis Day 2021 when Public Health Wales implemented a rapid pathway to streamline testing times and introduced a Cepheid rapid PCR testing machine. The Hepatitis C Trust delivered testing events on the wings as well as awareness training to the healthcare teams. BCUHB worked hard to ensure access to treatment pathways was as streamlined as possible.
After months of planning, The Hepatitis C Trust peer project launched with two full-time members of staff, Neil Emery and Jenessa Turnbull, to support the newly appointed BBV nurse Anya Hughes. The Trust team quickly provided the prisoners and staff with awareness training and recruited peers to support this and have all-important myth-busting conversations with fellow prisoners on the wings.
Over the 18 months the team managed to test over 95% of the population between them with 18 prison volunteer peers and use the voice of lived experience with those men who initially declined testing, the team managed to overturn over 300 of those decisions.
Following the award ceremony, Lee Devereux, The Hepatitis C Trust Southern England and Wales Prisons Manager, said: “We’re very proud that The Hepatitis C Trust Peer Project was an integral part of the HMP Berwyn elimination programme and the have worked alongside our partners to achieve such great success. It is brilliant that the hard work of everybody involved has been recognised by the NHS Wales Awards. It’s another great example of multi-disciplinary teamwork in action to eliminate hepatitis C across the UK prison estate.”