Driving England’s fight to eliminate Hepatitis C

In January 2018, NHS England took the ambitious and welcome step of announcing that it was aiming to eliminate hepatitis C in England by 2025. The UK Government had already signed up to the World Health Organization’s targets to eliminate hepatitis C by 2030, so this was a strong statement of intent from the NHS, looking to go one better than the WHO and make England the first country in the world to eliminate the virus

The means by which the NHS planned to achieve elimination were unprecedented in terms of scale and approach. NHS England entered a procurement process with three pharmaceutical companies who manufactured the game-changing direct acting antiviral medicines (DAAs) in order to reach an agreement on supply of medicines. However, the discussions between NHS England and industry also included working out ways in which the companies themselves would work directly towards the elimination effort. 

The negotiation that went into securing the three year deal was hailed by Sir Simon Stevens as “sophisticated and unashamedly rigorous”, and the end result was nothing short of ground-breaking. Each company was awarded a share of the market while being tasked with taking forward programmes to improve diagnosis and linkage to treatment of people with hepatitis C. This was a totally new way for the NHS and industry to collaborate and provided, for example, a series of intensive test and treat sessions in the prison environment, partnering with prison health providers and the third sector, and projects focused on needle exchange and community pharmacies.