“It is undoubtedly a high cost. The unfortunate thing is there are an awful lot of people who need it. We’re talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of people,” the Hepatitis C Trust's chief executive, Charles Gore, was quoted as saying by The Guardian.
The virus can be treated with less costly drugs, though it takes a much longer time, is less efficient and has grave side effects.
The price of the medicine, sofosbuvir, is 35,000 pounds ($50,000) for a 12-week course and twice as much for 24-week course. This means that the state will have to spend about 1 billion pounds to cure 20,000 people, The Guardian reported. The NHS decided to postpone the introduction of the medicine until the end of July despite plans for an April launch.
However, treating 500 people is not enough and the medicine should be introduced as soon as possible, Hepatitis C Coalition chair Mark Thursz said, the newspaper reported.
“What worries me about it is that if you have got advanced liver disease with hepatitis C, you could progress at any stage to the point where it is very difficult or impossible to reverse the situation or have any improvement. Opportunities are being missed by any delay,” Thursz said.
The hepatitis C is a liver virus transmitted the contact of an infected person's blood. More than 150,000 people in England suffer from the disease.
