Project 1 - Objectives

Overall, the Project aims at enhancing HCV infection diagnostics in the primary care units and as a consequence will contribute to the decrease of number of persons infected with HCV who have not been diagnosed yet.

The indirect Project’s objectives are development of indications for HCV testing based on individual risk assessment in primary care units and implementation of HCV diagnostics standards which have been adopted in developed countries.

Execution of aforesaid objectives will be feasible through offering approximately 20,000 tests in selected primary care units in Poland. It will ensure:

•detection of HCV infection in persons unaware of their health status and granting medical care
•screening for persons from close contact of HCV cases (family members, sexual partners)
•patient’s education regarding the consequences of blood-borne infections, routes of HCV transmission and prevention of HCV infections as well as the collection and analysis of data on: 
•prevalence of HCV infections in the general population
•frequency of well-known risk factors of HCV infections
•routes of HCV transmission and especially risky events in household settings.

The obtained epidemiological data will enable to determine the basis for more effective diagnostics of HCV infection within the frames of public health programs and, we do believe, will be used in economic analyses of routine implementing of HCV testing in primary care units (enabling to decide whether implementation of routine HCV testing in primary care units would be cost-effective).

Diagnostics and treatment of persons diagnosed with hepatitis C, testing of persons from close contact of HCV cases and providing comprehensive correct knowledge of HCV transmission constitutes indispensable, but not the one and only, element of hepatitis C prevention in the general population.