Author information

¹1Office of the Director, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA; email: rachael.fleurence@nih.gov.

²2Department of Transfusion Medicine, Clinical Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

³3National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

⁴4Task Force for Global Health, Decatur, Georgia, USA.

Abstract

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is predominantly transmitted through parenteral exposures to infectious blood or body fluids. In 2019, approximately 58 million people worldwide were still infected with HCV, and 290,000 deaths occurred due to hepatitis C-related conditions, despite hepatitis C being curable. There are substantial barriers to elimination, including the lack of widespread point-of-care diagnostics, cost of treatment, stigma associated with hepatitis C, and challenges in reaching marginalized populations, such as people who inject drugs. The World Health Organization (WHO) has set goals to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030. Several countries, including Australia, Egypt, Georgia, and Rwanda, have made remarkable progress toward hepatitis C elimination. In the United States, the Biden-Harris administration recently issued a plan for the national elimination of hepatitis C. Global progress has been uneven, however, and will need to accelerate considerably to reach the WHO's 2030 goals. Nevertheless, the global elimination of hepatitis C is within reach and should remain a high public health priority.