New Zealand Listener – June 01, 2019

JUNE 1 2019 LISTENER 27

Stars not infected, but prepared to front,

are fewer, but in 2015, the UK pop duo Right

Said Fred, who admitted using steroids in

the 1980s, publicly went and got tested for

hep C as part of a “I’m Not Too Sexy to Get

Tested” campaign in Britain. Both tested

negative.

But hepatitis C is not just a celebrity dis-

ease. Three years ago, I interviewed a group

of New Zealanders who had lived with the

virus. Most had been cured, either through

the punishing road of interferon or via anti-

viral drug trials administered by Gane.

“It was like having the Sword of Damocles

lifted,” a senior civil servant cured in one

of Gane’s trials told me. “For years, every

time I had an ache or pain, I would worry

that something was wrong, that liver cancer

had got me. I didn’t count on a future old

age or feel confident making those sorts of

plans. It was quite subtle, really, but once it

was gone, I was able to see how much the

disease had affected me.”

Understandably, few of those people were

willing to have their names published. A

successful campaign will need not only

people like them to brave the stigma, but

also people prepared to simply say in public

that they’re getting the test, just in case.

“If you could get one All Black ...” muses

Freeman. “Because they have this blood rule

on-field, it’s recognition that HIV, hep B and

hep C are spread by blood-to-blood contact.

We’d want them to say, ‘I’ve taken the test, I

don’t have hep C.’ And even if they do have

hep C, ‘I’ve taken the test, wait eight weeks,

I don’t have hep C any more.’ It doesn’t

matter, the answer will still be the same. So,

taking the test, there’s no risk. If you do have

hep C, we’ll cure you and we won’t run [the

ad in the media] for eight weeks!

“This afternoon, there are 10,000 New

Zealanders driving home from work going,

‘Oh, jeez, I’m feeling tired’, where it’s hep

C and they don’t know they’ve got it. And

you need to get to that group. You need to

be able to communicate with them, and go,

‘Guess what? You’ve got something, you

might not know it, but we can fix it, and

make you feel better.’ And that’s the key

message, because I’m not going to get hep

C-tested unless there’s some benefit for me.

And having this universal cure available,

free, means that, yeah, you got it, and eight

weeks later, no, you don’t.”

The undiagnosed group are “the lucki-

est people ever”, says Heal. “It’s incredible.

Walk in, find out, but as soon as they get

the bad news, they get the good news. It’s a

remarkable thing.”

Part of the reason for Australia’s high rate

of diagnosis, says Gane, is the years of work

put into awareness among risk groups by the

Australasian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis

and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM).

By comparison, says Heal, “there really are

K

EN

(^) D
O
W
N
IE
“In New Zealand, we
think 40-50% of people
living with hepatitis C
are still undiagnosed.
You’re not going to cure
every one if they don’t
know they have hep C.
Dr Ed Gane: “We
need to get out
there and get
people tested.”