Hepatitis C in Egypt – past, present, and future

Abstract

Hepatitis C viral infection is endemic in Egypt with the highest prevalence rate in the world. It is widely accepted that the implementation of mass population antischistosomal treatment involving administration of tartar emetic injections (from 1950s to 1980s) led to widespread infection. What is less well known, however, is that these schemes were implemented by the Egyptian Ministry of Health on the advice of the World Health Organization. There has been a spectrum of treatments to target the public health disaster represented by the hepatitis C problem in Egypt: from the use of PEGylated interferon to the recent use of direct acting antiviral drugs. Some new treatments have shown >90% efficacy. However, cost is a key barrier to access these new medicines. This is coupled with a growing population, limited resources, and a lack of infection control practices which means Egypt still faces significant disease control issues today.

Keywords:

• hepatitis C
• Egypt
• schistosomiasis

Acknowledgments

All authors acknowledge the support of the Wellcome Global Centre at Imperial College London for financial and logistic support and the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre at Imperial College London for infrastructure support.

Disclosure

MMEC is supported by a Fellowship from the Sir Halley Stewart Trust (Cambridge, UK). MMEC and SDT-R hold grants from the United Kingdom Medical Research Council. AIG was supported by a doctorate grant from the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.