Hundreds of Incarcerated People Are Dying of Hepatitis C, Despite a Cure | Virus World | Scoop.it
From www.statnews.com - December 16, 2022 3:27 PM

More than 1,000 incarcerated people died from hepatitis C-related complications between 2014 and 2019, even though a simple cure is available, according to a new STAT investigation.

 

He knew he had hepatitis C. And he knew, too, about the simple, once-daily pills that could fully cure him of the potentially deadly viral infection in about 12 weeks. But Ritchie was serving a 20-year sentence for armed robbery, and the Missouri Department of Corrections refused to treat him. Ritchie begged repeatedly for the medicine. He went through all the formal steps to request medical care. The prison system knew he was getting sicker and sicker — it documented his deteriorating condition in his health records. The prison’s doctors wrote frequently he would benefit from hepatitis C treatment. But officials still denied him, in the same way a STAT investigation documented prisons around the country are still denying thousands of others the cure. So the virus infecting Ritchie’s blood continued to replicate, scarring his liver until it was so damaged that it could hardly function. Eventually he was diagnosed with liver cancer, a common complication of untreated hepatitis C. Now, the prison argued, he was too sick for the drugs to work. They refused him again. “I don’t have the energy to do nothing anymore,” Ritchie told a court in 2019. “I try to talk too long, I can’t breathe … I get out and get a little fresh air, but I can’t do a lot of walking, and I can’t get in the sun.” He died in June 2021 at the age of 64, nearly five years after his first request for medication.

 

STAT’s investigation found that 1,013 people died of hepatitis C-related complications in states’ custody in the six years after the first cure, a Gilead antiviral drug called Sovaldi, hit the market in late 2013. This tally, based on an analysis of 27,674 highly restricted death records, has never before been reported. Many of those 1,013 people were not serving life sentences; they would likely have had the chance to return home, reapply for jobs, and reconnect with parents, spouses, and children — or, in Ritchie’s case, his one grandchild, Gabe. Many should not have died. In fact, the treatment for hepatitis C is a modern medical marvel. The scientists who paved the way for its discovery won a Nobel Prize. Public health experts say it’s possible to cut hepatitis C deaths to virtually zero, and effectively eliminate the virus as we’ve done with smallpox or polio. Francis Collins, the White House science adviser and former longtime director of the National Institutes of Health, called STAT’s findings “unacceptable.” “You have to wonder if this individual [Ritchie] had received [treatment] at the first opportunity, would he still be alive today?” Collins said. Told of STAT’s findings, Chelsea Clinton, a global health advocate and vice chair of the Clinton Foundation, said the rationing of hepatitis C care by prisons and people dying as a result is “incredibly infuriating.” “It certainly is a gross injustice that we are continuing to punish people who are already incarcerated as a punishment,” she said. “That sometimes there’s a death sentence attached if there’s untreated hepatitis C — that to me is morally indefensible.....