Sciortino Pushes for More Money for Hepatitis C Testing
by Michael P. Norton, State House News Service, published in Somerville Journal
4/13/2006
As the number of Hepatitis C cases explodes, state funding to pay for testing, counseling, education and treatment has been slashed and most of those infected with the chronic disease remain unaware of their condition, state officials and health care activists said today.
"Fewer people have access to testing," Dr. Bela Matyas, medical director of epidemiology at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, said at a legislative briefing Tuesdayu, describing the consequences of reductions in the state budget's Hepatitis C line item over the past five years. "More people have gone unaware."
Rep. Carl Sciortino said he is filing a budget amendment Wednesday that would increase annual funding for Hepatitis C counseling and testing to $2.5 million. He's rounded up more than a dozen state reps to sign on so far.
Sciortino recalled working at the Fenway Community Health Center in 2003 and learning, just as one of his family members was diagnosed with the virus, that the center's Hepatitis C program was closing due to budget cuts. "It's a very personal matter for me," said Sciortino, a freshman Democrat who represents Somerville and Medford.
Unlike Hepatitis A and B, there is no vaccine or cure for Hepatitis C, the blood-borne disease that attacks the liver and can lead to cirrhosis, liver cancer or death. The virus is spread primarily through intravenous drug use, but risk factors also include exposure to infected blood by health care and public safety workers; unprotected sex; and receipt of blood transfusions prior to 1992, before blood supply screening. It's also the primary reason for liver transplants, experts said today.
Matyas said 54,000 cases, including 10,000 new diagnoses in 2004, have been reported to the state since it became a reportable disease in 1992. By the end of the decade, Hepatitis C will kill more people in the United States than AIDS, according to Centers for Disease Control data.
Annual state spending on Hepatitis C stood at $2.75 million in fiscal years 2001 and 2002, but was cut to less than $1 million in fiscal 2003 and has been funded at about $563,000 for the past three fiscal years. The budgets offered this year by Gov. Willard Mitt Romney and the House Ways and Means Committee maintain funding at $563,000.