‘Behind closed doors, no one sees, no one knows’: hepatitis C, stigma and treatment-as-prevention in prison

Evaluating the Prevention Benefit of HCV Treatment: Modeling the SToP‐C Treatment as Prevention Study in Prisons

“…33 However, it is important to consider that people in prison may be reticent to come forward for HCV treatment when primary prevention services are absent or limited (e.g. OAT and NSP) [34][35][36] , so giving impetus to improving these services for scaling-up treatment.…”

Expert stakeholder perspectives on the acceptability of treatment‐as‐prevention in prison: a qualitative substudy of the ‘Surveillance and Treatment of Prisoners with Hepatitis C’ project (SToP‐C)

“…Although the logic of implementing DAA treatment-asprevention in a setting and population of high prevalence was well grounded, a qualitative substudy was important to assess the acceptability of the intervention among key participating groups. Interviews with prisoners were conducted both before and after treatment [20,29,30]; the remaining stakeholders were interviewed once during the latter stages of the trial. This paper focuses upon interviews conducted with key HCV experts recruited Australia-wide.…”

It is time for us all to embrace person-centred language for people in prison and people who were formerly in prison

“…As discussed by Broady et al, this is likely a result of drug use being a criminalised activity, and being a "modifiable" behaviour as opposed to a medical condition such as HIV or hepatitis C. However, this is revealed differently depending upon the situational sub-group context. For example an Australian study found that among people who inject drugs within prison, hepatitis C stigma was common, having the potential to disrupt networks and lead to social isolation (Rance et al, 2020).…”