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- Hacker News
- > Around 50,200 adults are living with hepatitis C, figures for England in 2024 suggest.
> Estimates indicate 84.6% of those living with hepatitis C have been diagnosed - just short of the 90% target.
How do they know there are that many Hep C patients if they haven’t been diagnosed?
by dabinat - Perhaps raw statistics, or estimates based on measuring traces in wastewater. I know that in the U.S. during covid they traced some new viral strains using that method.by becquerel
- Just a guess: Ratio of positive results out of previously unknown cases gives a good estimate of the total expected unknown cases. Precision depends on selection bias, and statistics has tools to estimate and/or improve it.by aljgz
- There is a pretty striking contrast here with the infected blood scandal. The NHS went from being responsible for one of the worst hepatitis C transmission disasters in the country's history to potentially becoming one of the first health systems to eliminate the diseaseby MarceliusK
- I've always found it a bit surprising that we don't all celebrate smallpox elimination day. I think it'd be a great reminder of the victories that humanity has had against the four horsemen.by fkozlowski
- I got really sad reading Good Omens where Pestilence has retired because of all the progress of medical science and thinking "if only". Funny enough, Pratchett has Famine doing exactly what's working for Pestilence today, convincing people to make bad choices despite easy ways to avoid the horsemen's influence.
- Given the recent outbreaks of diseases we should have already eliminated here (for other reasons that "we shouldn't discuss")...
I view this as a wonderful "they don't report in and the coroner doesn't check" type of elimination
by rob_c - Introducing: Hepatitis C++
- ...followed by Hepatitis Rustby userbinator
- I guess someone complained about memory safety and they intend to rewrite hepatitis in Rust.
Not everything has to be rewritten in Rust! Hepatitis is a virus, C is much better suited for that kind of project, Rust is for fungal diseases, not viruses.
by GuB-42 - Wouldn't measles be the better (immune) memory safety joke?by selimthegrim
- Safe needle practices have been known for decades, it's really not that hard.
If I say I'm going to borrow a needle and just look at it, you should just trust me. If I use it, I make sure to sterilize it before returning it.
by farfatched - Good for you. We get explosive diarrhea as the prize in the States. Wanna trade?
- and your freedom model named fable even refuse to answer lots of questions relate to the explosive diarrhea.by tw1984
- Nah we are good - We have our problems (including our own version of your guy but he hasn't won yet and is currently running against a man with a bin on his head) but on the whole, nah we are good.by noir_lord
- Makes me wonder if this project is the reason for a slight downturn in Liver cancer from 2019 forward in the UK.
https://crukcancerintelligence.shinyapps.io/CancerStatsDataH...
by lebuffon - Interesting that it's just England (and not Scotland, Wales, or NI). I realize they all have independent NHSs, but still would assume a program like this would rolled out across all the constituent countries.by alistairSH
- My guess is that devolution makes these programs and statistics look more separate than they really areby MarceliusK
- Each country also has their own Public Health bodies, so pretty much everything related to health is devolvedby beejiu
- I wouldn't have assumed this really because really the whole point of devolution is that they get to choose what to prioritise, so perhaps the other nations choose to do something they consider to be more pressing for their populations.by alibarber
- Each nation has different social and health issues, each nation makes its own plan.
All four nations NHSes work with a single charity, the Hep C Trust.
They're all following the WHO targets for elimination -- you're hearing about this now soon after World Hepatitis Day (July 28th, as conceived of by the WHO).
https://www.hepctrust.org.uk/blog/2026/07/four-nations-on-th...
As for progress:
- July 2026: Wales doesn't have percentage-of-population counts but here's its latest report: https://phw.nhs.wales/reports/trends-in-the-prevention-diagn...
- November 2025: Scotland believes it has identified and is treating 85% of chronic sufferers: https://publichealthscotland.scot/publications/surveillance-...
- January 2021: Northern Ireland doesn't publish stats, but has a 2021-2025 plan (there's no 2026- plan issued as far as I know) https://www.health-ni.gov.uk/publications/northern-ireland-h...
by amiga386 - I am glad they’re screening for it. I was born to someone who had the virus, but didn’t know I had Hep C myself until I submitted myself to an exceptionally thorough STI testing panel. I say exceptional, because the standard ones I’d done throughout college and early adulthood do not happen to include that particular test. So I feel a bit lucky to have been able to get diagnosed and treated in my mid-20s, before the disease could do much damage.by thex10
- If you're comfortable sharing, did you have any symptoms? Or was it just latent/dormant?by anitil
- i think during that time / place it was risk based - if you didn't know your parent had it (or didn't tell your dr), and weren't an intravenous drug user, etc. its likely no one would have screened for it.by balderdash
- Good for you! Could you share the name of that particular test here? I'm confident I'm clear but might want to include that test in case I need to in the future.by srik
- A disease that can stay silent for years, but is also highly curable once detected, seems like exactly the thing you want to screen for more aggressivelyby MarceliusK
- That's odd. I just looked at what I thought was a pretty standard piss and blood STI test results of my own, and it covered:
- Syphilis
- Hep B
- Hep C
- HIV 1 and 2 and P24
- Chlamydia
- Gonorrhoea
by nly