New all-oral drugs for Hepatitis C
Probably the most important piece of news for GI and Liver disease in the recent past is that the new all-oral drugs for treating Hepatitis C have been approved by NICE, and will be funded by NHS England, starting this month or soon after.
The whole of England will be covered by ‘Operational Delivery Networks’ linking together specialist liver centres with local hospitals, so that Hepatitis C patients can have their treatment overseen by experts, but delivered and managed locally to where they live. These treatments are a huge step forward from previous regimens involving Interferon, so that the vast majority of patients will be cured of Hepatitis C with a course of tablets, usually of 3 months duration only.