Guidelines for the Screening Care and Treatment of Persons with Chronic Hepatitis C Infection Updated Version April 2016

Book excerpt: The field of HCV therapeutics continues to evolve rapidly and since the World Health Organization (WHO) issued its first Guidelines for the screening care and treatment of persons with hepatitis C infection in 2014 several new medicines have been approved by at least one stringent regulatory authority. These medicines called direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) are transforming the treatment of HCV enabling regimens that can be administered orally are of shorter duration (as short as eight weeks) result in cure rates higher than 90% and are associated with fewer serious adverse events than the previous interfere on containing regimens. WHO is updating its hepatitis C treatment guidelines to provide recommendations for the use of these new medicines. The objectives of these WHO guidelines are to provide updated evidence-based recommendations for the treatment of persons with hepatitis C infection using where possible all DAA-only combinations. The guidelines also provide recommendations on the preferred regimens based on a patient?s HCV genotype and clinical history and assess the appropriateness of continued use of certain medicines. This document also includes existing recommendations on screening for HCV infection and care of persons infected with HCV that were first issued in 2014. The key audience for these guidelines are policy-makers in low- and middle-income countries who formulate country-specific treatment guidelines and who plan infectious disease treatment programmes and services in addition to those people responsible for delivering treatment. The guidelines are appropriate for all countries including high-income countries.