Free hepatitis screening available
Seeking to curb the rising hepatitis C rate, Mon Valley Community Health Services, with Central Outreach Wellness Center, is offering a free hepatitis C screening from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday at the SPHS Family Health Complex, 2 Eastgate Ave., Monessen.
Hepatitis C testing requires just a finger prick to draw a drop of blood. The test takes 30 seconds and results are available within 15 minutes.
Dr. Scott Cook, medical director at Mon Valley Community Health Services (MVCHS), said one in three people will test positive for hepatitis C.
“Hepatitis C is a silent killer because if left undiagnosed, it can eventually lead to cirrhosis or even liver cancer,” Cook said. “By screening, we do save lives.”
Cook said there is a link between the rising hepatitis C rate and the opioid epidemic, directly related to the lack of access to sterile needles. Testing is critical because those infected with hepatitis C can live for decades with the disease without feeling any symptoms.
Central Outreach Wellness Center obtained a state grant for community outreach, including the addiction recovery community, to test for hepatitis C and HIV. The center is a state-funded infectious disease clinic with offices on the North Shore and Washington.
Raelynn Jackson, director of MVCHS, said the state recently lifted a previous regulation, now permitting primary care doctors to treat hepatitis C patients.
According to Kathi Scholz, family nurse practioner and hepatitis C/HIV outreach director for Central Outreach Wellness Center, nearly 50 percent of those tested are found positive for hepatitis C.
Effective Jan. 1, all insurance companies must offer hepatitis C cures.
Jackson also noted that the baby-boomer population – those born between 1945 and 1965 – were never previously tested. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, baby boomers are five times more likely to have hepatitis C.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, 2,967 cases of acute hepatitis C were reported in 2016, or one person per every 100,000. In comparison, the rate was 0.8 person per 100,000 in 2015. Actual acute cases are estimated to be nearly 14 times the number of reported cases.
Those at risk for hepatitis C are current or former injection drug users, including those who injected only once many years ago; recipients of clotting factor concentrates made before 1987, when less advanced methods for manufacturing those products were used; recipients of blood transfusions or solid organ transplants prior to July 1992, before better testing of blood donors became available; chronic hemodialysis patients; people with known exposures to hepatitis C, such as health care workers after needle sticks involving hepatitis C-positive blood or recipients of blood or organs from a donor who tested positive; people with HIV infection; and children born to hepatitis C-positive mothers.
No vaccine is available to prevent hepatitis C.
Although infrequent, hepatitis C virus can also be spread through sex with an hepatitis C-infected person, sharing personal items contaminated with infectious blood, such as razors or toothbrushes, other health care procedures that involve invasive procedures, such as injections and unregulated tattooing.
Approximately 20 to 30 percent of those newly-infected experience fatigue, abdominal pain, poor appetite, or jaundice. When symptoms do occur, they can include fever, fatigue, dark urine, clay-colored stool, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, joint pain and jaundice.