HEPATITIS C STILL SPREADING

Warnings to drug users not enough

EDMONTON - Warnings about the dangers of sharing needles haven't been enough
to stop the spread of hepatitis C among Edmonton's drug users, says a local
infectious disease specialist.

"They know not to share the rig, as they call it -- the syringe," Dr.
Stephen Shafran of the University of Alberta said in an interview Friday.

"But they often mix (the drugs) together in common bowls and spoons and they
don't understand that they're still sharing."

The drug users don't realize that it takes only a microscopic bit of
infected fluid to spread the virus from one person to another, he said.
Shafran was among the speakers at a two-day conference of the Canadian Liver
Foundation.

Hepatitis C is a major cause of liver disease and is spread primarily
through injection drug use.

A major challenge in Edmonton is the fact that the most popular injection
drug is cocaine, said Shafran. Unlike heroin, cocaine has no substitute in a
pill form, like methadone, that addicts can easily switch to.

And because cocaine's effects wear off quickly, users shoot up repeatedly.

There were 692 hepatitis C cases reported in the Capital Health region last
year. Experts presume many more people are infected but haven't been tested
and have no symptoms. Shafran said the disease can be cured in 50 to 80 per
cent of cases, depending on which strain of the virus a person has. However,
the standard cure means taking two drugs for 48 weeks, and that can be a
challenge for drug users with troubled lifestyles.

Shafran and Dr. Sam Lee of the University of Calgary say they're seeing a
steady stream of middle-class patients who experimented briefly with
injection drugs decades earlier and now find themselves with hepatitis C.

Most of these people will live for many years and die of other causes, said
Lee. Only around 20 per cent will end up with cirrhosis of the liver, he
said, but because there are an estimated 250,000 Canadians with the virus,
that's a lot of people.

"When you look at the liver transplant programs across Canada, Hep C is
usually the leading reason people need it," said Shafran.