Not on track: Hep Summit in Brazil reveals elimination goal by 2030 a mirage

Hepatitis Victoria CEO Melanie Eagle attended the World Hepatitis Summit 2017 in Brazil recently and came back with some unsettling news. Despite clear progress in countries like Egypt, China and Brazil, the world is clearly not on track to reach the goal of eliminating viral hepatitis by 2030. An estimated 1.4 million people died of hepatitis related diseases in 2016, a mournful total that is more than the number of deaths for HIV or tuberculosis. 'Unfortunately, we are not on track to eliminate viral hepatitis by 2030,' Melanie says. 'There are still massive challenges often reflected by health system dysfunction and lack of resources...even in Australia there is the slowing down of people commencing treatment for hep C, so there's much more to be done,' she says. 'There's no reason to be confident and we have to think of new ways to progress the agenda of elimination.'