The Ministry of Health and Welfare on Thursday said it plans to extend coverage for oral hepatitis C drugs to everyone covered by the National Health Insurance, with officials saying that plan would eradicate the disease by 2025.
Under the proposed policy, medical coverage for the drugs would be available to all people with hepatitis C, not just those with severe liver fibrosis or cirrhosis, Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中) said.
New oral drugs for hepatitis C have a 97 percent success rate in curing the disease after a 12-week treatment regimen and the ministry in January last year extended medical coverage for their use, Chen said.
However, current NHI guidelines allow public funding for the drugs only when the patient has F3 liver fibrosis or cirrhosis, he said.
After consulting healthcare experts at a meeting earlier in the day, the ministry said that extending coverage unconditionally would help the nation eliminate hepatitis five years before the WHO’s target of 2030, he said.
The proposed changes would increase the share of the NHI budget for hepatitis C treatments to an estimated NT$6.5 billion (US$210.4 million), a 30 percent increase, he said.
The new guidelines would facilitate clearing an estimated 40,000 people of hepatitis C per year and the ministry anticipates that the disease would be eradicated from the 210,000 people who have it within seven years, Chen said.
Before the ministry approves the policy, officials would have to discuss pricing issues with pharmaceutical companies, said Kang Jaw-jou (康照洲), a National Yangming University pharmaceutical sciences professor who chaired the meeting.
The government’s ability to set a price that is acceptable to manufacturers and within the limited NHI budget is crucial to moving the plan forward, Kang said.
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