I agree that "American workers deserve better healthcare coverage." I believe, however, that if we ever tried to implement universal healthcare, we would find we have far too many patients and far too few resources. We would also find that people with money really hate waiting in line behind people who don't.
I'm doing very well, thanks for asking. Four years undetected as of February PCR and currently almost six months clean of pain meds and most 'arthritis-like' symptoms. Only lingering side-effect of treatment seems to be some hard-core insomnia - and since I was a light sleeper pre-tx, it may not be related.
Please excuse my distaste for the CDC and their info. The fact that they ceded the 'patent rights' to HCV to Chiron in the early '90s for a chump change promise of research $ for a HCV vaccine has cost American health consumers millions of dollars and is probably a major reason why we don't have IFN alfa 2b attached to a branched PEG molecule.IMHO.
I should probably get over it and learn to look at their stuff more objectively - after all, it was one of their docs that supplied Chiron with the half gallon of tainted primate blood they used to clone HCV, thus assuring their international patent rights.
And yourself? Any hope of getting out from under the AIH/HCV 'Sword of Damocles'?
Vertical transmission (that is, from pregnant woman to her unborn children) is also important (but unusual) cause of HCV.
It is really time you Americans had a decent universal healthcare scheme. When I lived in the US (had done for ~ 5years around the time of the first and early second Clinton Administrations) Hilary Clinton was investigating the possibility of some form of universal healthcare, and, predictably, was derided as a "communist" or similar, by the health insurance and medical industries. Universal healthcare is not a communist ideal; we have had universal healthcare (working well alongside a private insurance based system in Australia for 40 years, and we are pretty damn far from being communists. American workers deserve better healthcare coverage.
it seems criminal to charge so much for treating this disease! i don't care how anyone got it, but we should be able to treat it without going bankrupt!
As it has been said, it is strictly a blood to blood transmitted disease.
As for the most common means of transmission, and this will also probably spark a debate, I think the numbers will bear out that IV Drug Use is the more frequently reported, or suspected, means of infection.
As the previous post indicate, STD transmission is low, but not out of the question, particulairily given some of the means at which it is practiced these days. I'm not sure if the studies quoted recognized how it was transmitted, but suspect that the rates of STD infection may be more due to the higher degree of infection which exists within the incarcerated population of our penial system, no pun intended, in the USA where blood to blood interchange is more likely given the forms of sex practiced there.
Bottom line is that some folks do not know how they were infected and it reality it really does not matter IMHO. We all make mistakes and whether a persons infection is due to poor choices or not should not matter one iota, "To err is human, to forgive divine."
The fact of the matter is that they are infected, need to be more cautious that they do not transmitt their infection, and need decide whether to try and eradicate their infection. If one suspects that they may be tested, or engauged in behaviour(s)/practice(s) which may have placed them at a higher risk of experiencing a blood to blood transfer with another individual, then they should get tested.
It is estimated that the rate of infection is grossly understated, particularily since the numbers tend to omit the imprisoned and homeless segments of our population, where ironically it sounds like the number of infections may be highest. Wether this is done to underplay the numbers or not may be pure speculation by most.
Early detection and eradication of the virus would seem to me to be the best means currently available towards eliminating, or at least lessening, the danger this insidious disease poses to others. Especially since the current medicines to treat it are not very effective to say the least.
Everyone lies about sex. Most IVDUs lie about their using.
Those %s are suspect, especially anything that claims to put hard figures on a disease that wasn't even called HCV <1990s.
Hep C is a blod borne disease, meaning blood to blood contact is necssary for transmission. Intravenous drug use is the primary method of transmission. Blood transfusion (before 1991 or so) and organ transplants are other methods of transmission. Sexual transmission is possible but is considered rare. Sexual transmission is usually male to female, not female to male.
Hep B is a Std and is easily transmitted through sexual activity.
Neither is transmitted through casual contact.