700 people. 20 years. 1 medicine. In this episode of Discovery Files, veteran scientists Warren Kati, PhD, and Seble Wagaw detail the exhilarating journey to uncover a treatment for people with HCV.
An inside look at discovering a medicine for hepatitis C
Our commitment to hepatitis C elimination around the world
When it comes to global HCV elimination, time matters. We are less than 10 years away from the World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2030 goal for HCV elimination. Elimination is achievable by then, but the HCV patient community is still up against some enormous challenges.
Many of the "missing millions" living with HCV are at the margins of society - without health systems designed to reach or support them. At AbbVie, we see it as our responsibility to accelerate efforts to help simplify the system. While much work remains, what's been accomplished has paved the way towards elimination.
We are working with the hepatitis C community to support an estimated 300 targeted, local micro-elimination projects worldwide to move us closer to a world free of hepatitis C. These projects are helping fuel new models of care from the prisons of Portugal to the remote mountains of South Korea. These are a select few of the AbbVie efforts being conducted around the world:
Transformative partnerships
We all have a part to play in making hepatitis C elimination the next public health success story, and transformative partnerships are essential to helping solve some of the most pressing challenges. Hear what some of AbbVie’s partners in eliminating hepatitis C have to say about it:
Removing barriers to care
Addressing barriers to hepatitis C care will mean uniting all of us — healthcare providers, patients, advocates, caregivers, healthcare systems — in a collective effort to overcome the obstacles. Hear how lack of education, stigma, discrimination, and global challenges can prevent people affected by hepatitis C from accessing care:
Urgency to act
We know curing hepatitis C is not just about science – it’s also about society. While many of the ‘missing millions’ may live at the margins and be harder to reach, acting now to help eliminate HCV globally is critical for all patients, regardless of location or status. Hear why:
Partnering to solve pressing challenges
AbbVie has a long history of working with stakeholders to increase access to our medicines worldwide, including licensing our medicine to quality-assured providers of generics so treatments are available for individuals in more than 90 low- and middle-income countries and territories.
* Patients who achieve a sustained virologic response at 12 weeks post treatment (SVR12) are considered cured of hepatitis C.