Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he plans to take to expedite the (a) prevention, (b) testing, (c) diagnosis and (d) treatment of hepatitis C.

Public Health England (PHE) is working collaboratively with NHS England, non-government organisations and academic colleagues to pilot models of service delivery and novel testing methods, including point of care testing and alternatives to venepuncture to improve uptake of testing and diagnosis of hepatitis C in community settings, including primary care and drug services.

A number of local areas have drawn up hepatitis C action plans and work programmes to drive improvements in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of chronic hepatitis C across the United Kingdom.

NHS England has now published a commissioning policy which significantly extends access to the new oral treatments to thousands of hepatitis C patients with cirrhosis. The policy can be found at:

http://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2015/06/hep-c-cirrhosis-polcy-statmnt-0615.pdf

PHE contributes to the development of public health guidance to increase testing for hepatitis C. This includes the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on hepatitis B and C with respect to promoting and offering testing for these infections for people at increased risk of infection. This is available at:

http://guidance.nice.org.uk/PH43

The public health guidance on NICE guidelines on needle and syringe programmes is available at:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ph52