160,000 don't know they have hepatitis C

Last updated at 10:08 14 December 2005


More than 160,000 people in England are unaware they are infected with the hepatitis C virus leaving them at risk of severe liver disease, health experts have warned.

The Health Protection Agency's (HPA) report estimated that around 200,000 people in England are infected with hepatitis C and as many as five out of six are unaware of their infection.

Among them are older men and women from the 'Woodstock' generation who could have caught the infection after experimenting with drugs.

In most cases people can be successfully treated and cleared of the infection.

But because the disease can lie dormant in the body showing no symptoms for years, those who are infected are at risk of suffering severe liver by the time they are diagnosed.

Huge burden for NHS

The HPA warned the rising numbers of hepatitis C related liver disease patients will place a huge burden on the NHS over the next five years.

They said that more conservative estimates suggested that the number living with cirrhosis, liver failure and liver cancer could rise from 4,500 now to 7,000 in England and Wales by 2010.

But in a worst case scenario as many as 13,200 people could have some form of severe liver damage caused by hepatitis C in five years' time.

But The Hepatitis C Trust has claimed that over 400,000 people in the UK with the virus are completely unaware they have been infected.

The charity said that untreated hepatitis C is set to cost the NHS £156million in 2006 alone.

Dr Helen Harris, a hepatitis C expert at the HPA, said: "Most individuals with chronic hepatitis C infection can be successfully treated, but the success of treatment relies on people coming forward for testing."

The HPA used hospital admissions, diagnoses and liver transplant data to make their estimates, but said it was difficult to gauge the exact extend of the problem now and in the future.

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