NHS doctors have cured more than 100,000 people across England of hepatitis C in a single decade. The country is closing in on hepatitis C elimination and aiming to become one of the first nations in the world to wipe out the virus entirely. A national testing and treatment drive has turned what was once a feared, silent disease into something a short course of tablets can cure.

A Decade of Progress

The NHS rolled out pioneering antiviral drugs in 2015, and doctors have since found and treated over 100,000 people living with hepatitis C in England. Chronic cases have fallen sharply too. An estimated 129,000 people had the virus in 2015. By 2024, that figure had dropped to around 50,200, a fall of more than sixty percent. Treatment today is a short daily course of antiviral tablets, taken for eight to twelve weeks, and it cures more than ninety five percent of patients. England has already hit the World Health Organisation’s target of treating eighty percent of known cases, and deaths from the virus have fallen by thirty six percent over the last ten years. Each of these numbers is a step closer to full hepatitis C elimination.

Testing Reaches the Hidden Cases

Hepatitis C often causes no symptoms until serious liver damage has already set in, so thousands of people have carried the virus for years without knowing it. The NHS has widened testing in emergency departments, GP surgeries, and through a free home testing kit, part of a wider push toward eliminating hepatitis C for good. That wider net has uncovered nearly 1,900 previously undiagnosed cases in A&E alone since 2022. Health officials are urging adults born in Ukraine, Romania, Poland and several other Eastern European nations to get tested, since some may have picked up the virus through medical or dental procedures carried out before 1991, when sterilisation standards improved. The programme has also reached people affected by the infected blood scandal of the 1970s to 1990s, when contaminated blood products infected more than 30,000 people in the UK with hepatitis C and HIV.

The Sharp Drop Among People Who Inject Drugs

The sharpest fall in cases has come among people who inject drugs, the group at greatest risk of catching hepatitis C. Just 5.2 percent of this group tested positive for the virus in 2024, down from 28.6 percent in 2015. On paper, that’s a remarkable turnaround, and a real marker of progress toward hepatitis C elimination. But it also raises a harder question. Drug injection today carries far less risk of a lifelong, potentially fatal infection than it once did. Does that change how someone weighs the risk of using drugs in the first place?

Why a Cure Isn’t the Whole Story

Curing the virus removes one serious consequence of injecting drug use, but it doesn’t remove the others. Overdose and the wider harms of dependency are just as present as ever, and someone who has been successfully treated can still catch hepatitis C again if they carry on injecting with contaminated equipment. Health officials frame the falling numbers as a reason for continued vigilance, not reassurance. The UK Health Security Agency reports that around a third of people who inject drugs say needle and syringe provision doesn’t meet their needs, a gap that points to a wider truth: the infrastructure built to reduce harm still falls well short of eliminating it.

A treatment success story can only go so far while injecting drug use itself continues, since curing the virus treats a consequence of drug use, not its cause. Officials have said plainly that testing and treatment won’t finish the job alone. Dr Monica Desai of the UK Health Security Agency said it remains vital that those most at risk are offered testing and can access life saving treatment, alongside the support needed to stop new infections happening at all. The real measure of hepatitis C elimination might end up being less about how many people get cured, and more about how few people ever need to be.

A Human Story Behind the Numbers

Paul Eatwell, 65, from Blackburn, is one of the more than 100,000 people treated in the last decade. A routine blood test flagged an abnormality when he registered with a new GP practice, and doctors then diagnosed his hepatitis C. “My first reaction was disbelief,” he said. “I didn’t feel ill. I kept wondering how I could possibly have caught it.” Doctors never established exactly how Mr Eatwell contracted the virus, though they identified surgery he had in South Africa decades earlier as a possible risk factor. He now urges others to get tested and describes the treatment itself as no more demanding than one tablet a day for twelve weeks.

Health Secretary Yvette Cooper called the progress exactly the kind of preventative, forward looking healthcare the NHS should deliver, pointing to earlier diagnosis as a way of easing pressure on hospitals in the years ahead. Rachel Halford, chief executive of The Hepatitis C Trust, called the push toward hepatitis C elimination one of the most significant public health moments in the country’s history, though she warned the programme will need sustained funding and long term commitment to finish the job.

The Job Hepatitis C Elimination Has Not Yet Finished

England’s fight against hepatitis C is a genuine success story, built on testing, funding and more than a decade of coordinated effort. But curing infections that already exist is only half the equation. Real hepatitis C elimination, and real protection from the wider harms of injecting drug use, needs more than treatment after the fact. It needs fewer people ever reaching for a needle in the first place.

Source: dbrecoveryresources