Hepatitis C in England 2023: infographic (text version)
Updated 7 March 2024
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Measuring progress towards the elimination of hepatitis C virus (HCV) as a public health problem in England.
HCV prevalence
62,600 people (0.14% of the population) were estimated to be living with chronic hepatitis C infection in 2022. This is a 51.6% reduction from 2015. Among people who inject drugs (PWID), the proportion that had evidence of current (HCV ribonucleic acid (RNA) positive) infection decreased to 11.8% in 2022.
Incidence
New methodologies using new and existing data sources are needed to estimate incidence of HCV in the general population and among people who inject drugs.
Needle and syringe provision
Around one-third of PWID report inadequate needle and syringe provision for their needs. More needs to be done to identify gaps in provision of sterile and safe needles and syringes for people who use drugs in England.
Mortality
Impact target: ≤2 per 100,000 persons.
The HCV-related mortality rate was 0.44 per 100,000 population in 2022. This has reduced since 2015.
Hepatitis C reinfections
The rate of reinfection with hepatitis C was 7.8 per 100 person years between 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2019, reinfection rates were highest among people who had recently injected (22.6 per 100 person years) and among people who initiated HCV treatment in prison (20.4 per 100 person years).
Hepatitis C reinfections among prisoners
Integrating prison healthcare data into routine surveillance would provide further insight into testing, linkage to care, and the need for harm reduction among people in prison or recently released from prison.
Number of individuals diagnosed with chronic HCV infection who initiated curative HCV treatment
Programmatic target: ≥80%.
Between 2015 and 2022, 79.7% of patients diagnosed with chronic HCV initiated treatment. 98.1% of patients diagnosed and linked to care initiated treatment.
Information on data sources and methodologies can be found at Hepatitis C in England and the UK.