Health care providers in the province want to ensure everyone knows Hepatitis C is fully curable and they should not hesitate to get tested.
The Saskatchewan Health Authority is doing a public outreach campaign in advance of World Hepatitis Day on Saturday, July 28.
Saskatoon physician Morris Marketin is part of the outreach campaign.
“The new medications now give a 90 to 98 per cent chance of a cure,” he says. “And that’s eight weeks or 12 weeks of one pill, once a day.”
Marketin says the goal is to eventually eliminate Hep C entirely.
“The goal or the vision is by 2030, if we can diagnose everyone, treat 90 per cent of them, we can actually eradicate Hep C from the next two generations.”
Data from 2012 to 2016, shows Saskatchewan has the highest Hep C rates in Canada at 60.2 cases per 100,000 people.
The next highest region is the Yukon Territory at 48.8.
It is estimated as many as 266,000 people in Canada are living with the chronic Hepatitis C virus infection.
Three out every four people infected with Hep C were born between the years 1945 and 1965.
Up to 75 per cent of people living with the disease do not know they are infected.
It is estimated that as many as 25 per cent of people who have Hep C and go without treatment will get cirrhosis of the liver within 10 to 15 years and die without a transplant.
(PHOTO: Dr. Morris Marketin. Photo by Fraser Needham.)