Hepatitis C patients only have to pay half the price of medicine

Hepatitis C patients in our country only have to pay nearly half of the medicine cost, instead of having to pay 100% as before.

With the payment of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies supporting the cost of medicine, up to now, hepatitis C patients in our country only have to pay nearly half of the cost of medicine, instead of having to pay 100% as before. That is the information mentioned at the training conference on infectious diseases organized by the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the Vietnam Infectious Diseases Association this morning (April 11) in Hung Yen.

Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Van Kinh, Director of the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases

Hepatitis C is a common disease in our country with a rate of 4% to 7% of the population infected with chronic hepatitis C, meaning that there are currently nearly 4 million people carrying the hepatitis C virus. There is no vaccine to prevent the disease and there are no clinical symptoms.

Many people do not know they have the disease to seek treatment, until serious consequences such as cirrhosis and liver cancer occur and they go to the hospital, but it is too late. With the current regimen, treating hepatitis C with a combination of two drugs, Ribavirin and Peg-Interferon, more than 70% of patients will be cured.

However, the cost of treating hepatitis C is very high, a patient has to pay about 200 million VND/year, not to mention expensive tests such as viral load testing. Therefore, currently, only about 2,000 patients nationwide have access to treatment. Meanwhile, until October 2014, patients were only partially covered by health insurance for hepatitis C treatment drugs. However, patients are still struggling.

Associate Professor, Doctor Nguyen Van Kinh, Director of the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases, said that the hospital has been looking for ways to help hepatitis C patients, striving to increase the number of patients with this disease to 6,000 by the end of this year.

“We have negotiated with pharmaceutical companies to reduce the cost of diagnostic kits and treatment drugs. As a result, pharmaceutical companies Roche and MSD have started to have a price reduction policy. For example, Roche has reduced the price of drugs by 25% to 28%. MSD has reduced the price of drugs by 11% and patients who use 3 bottles of drugs will get 1 bottle free, helping patients increase access to treatment drugs. In addition, the Health Insurance Fund also pays 30% for patients treated for hepatitis C,” said Mr. Nguyen Van Kinh.

Thus, currently, hepatitis C patients are supported with nearly 50% of the cost of treatment drugs, but the amount of payment is still high, about 100 million/1 year. Therefore, the Central Hospital for Tropical Diseases will continue to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to reduce drug prices and recommend that health insurance increase payment for drugs for patients.

Currently, hepatitis C patients are mainly treated at upper-level hospitals because lower-level hospitals do not have enough capacity to test viral load./.

According to VOV