John C Martin Foundation.

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Aims To project the impact of scaling up oral antiviral therapy and harm reduction on chronic hepatitis C (CHC) prevalence and incidence among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Greece, to estimate the relationship between required treatment levels and expansion of harm reduction programs to achieve specific targets and to examine whether hepatitis C viruse (HCV) elimination among PWID is possible in this high prevalence setting. Design A dynamic discrete time, stochastic individual-based model was developed to simulate HCV transmission among PWID incorporating the effect of HCV treatment and harm reduction strategies, and allowing for reinfection following treatment. Setting/Participants The population of 8,300 PWID in Athens Metropolitan area Measurements Reduction in HCV prevalence and incidence in 2030 compared with 2016. Findings Moderate expansion of HCV treatment (treating 4%–8% of PWID/year), with simultaneous increase of 2%/year in harm reduction coverage (from 44% to 72% coverage over 15 years), was projected to reduce CHC prevalence among PWID in Athens by 46%–90% in 2030, compared with 2016. CHC prevalence would reduce below 10% within the next 4–5 years if annual HCV treatment numbers were increased up to 16%–20% PWID/year. The effect of harm reduction on incidence was more pronounced under lower treatment rates. Conclusions Based on theoretical model projections, scaled-up hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment and harm reduction interventions could achieve major reductions in HCV incidence and prevalence among people who inject drugs (PWID) in Athens, Greece by 2030. Chronic hepatitis C could be eliminated in the next 4–5 years by increasing treatment to more than 16% of PWID per year combined with moderate increases in harm reduction coverage.

BackgroundElimination of hepatitis C virus (HCV) among people who inject drugs (PWID) is a costly investment, so strategies should not only focus on eliminating the disease, but also on preventing disease resurgence. The aims of this study are to compute the minimum necessary antiviral therapies to achieve elimination with and without the additional expansion of harm reduction (HR) programs and to examine the sustainability of HCV elimination after 2030 if treatment is discontinued.MethodWe considered two types of epidemic (with low (30%) and high (50%) proportion of PWID who engage in sharing equipment (sharers)) within three baseline chronic HCV (CHC) prevalence settings (30%, 45% and 60%), assuming a baseline HR coverage of 40%. We define sustainable elimination strategies, those that could maintain eliminations results for a decade (2031–2040), in the absence of additional treatment.ResultsThe model shows that the optimum elimination strategy is dependent on risk sharing behavior of the examined population. The necessary annual treatment coverage to achieve HCV elimination under 45% baseline CHC prevalence, without the simultaneous expansion of HR programs, ranges between 4.7–5.1%. Similarly, under 60% baseline CHC prevalence the needed treatment coverage varies from 9.0–10.5%. Increasing HR coverage from 40% to 75%, reduces the required treatment coverage by 6.5–9.8% and 11.0–15.0% under 45% or 60% CHC prevalence, respectively. In settings with ≤45% baseline CHC prevalence, expanding HR to 75% could prevent the disease from rebounding after elimination, irrespective of the type of the epidemic. In high chronic HCV prevalence, counseling interventions to reduce sharing are also needed to maintain the HCV incident cases in low levels.ConclusionsHarm reduction strategies have a vital role in HCV elimination strategy, as they reduce the required number of treatments to eliminate HCV and they provide sustainability after the elimination. The above underlines that HCV elimination strategies should be built upon the existing HR services, and argue for HR expansion in countries without services.