What in the World is Hep C?; Raw Footage 14

focus on the Mexico. It's pretty widely prevalent across this thing. It's had a high prevalence and especially for the incarcerated community and we've just recently begun Universal Screening to make sure that we catch and identify all the image. And I can't give you the exact numbers on there but there's somewhere around 35 to 40% estimated. Of our inmates have been exposed to hepatitis C and we should know the numbers that are actively infected with hepatitis C. So it's a pretty big problem. And when they have it they can spread it while inside the prison system and after the release. So we're looking at I think an upcoming epidemic of hepatitis C. Well there's a lot of people who have been incarcerated who've had a history of injection drug exposure. And that's the principal agent. Principal means for contracting hepatitis C.

And over half of our inmates have an addictions disorder when they reach the prison. A lot of them have used injectable drugs and that's a classic way to get hepatitis C. Also some people, now fairly large number of the people who come in have tattoos or body art of some sort. And body art is one way that hepatitis C can be transmitted by injection of tattoo needles etc. So between those two we have a pretty high number of people who do have hepatitis C in our community as they come in. I want to ask you that question again. That's fine. Well there are two major ways of getting exposed

to hepatitis C. The first is by using injection drugs. A lot of people who are coming into our prison system have had a history of using injection drugs. If they've been sharing needles with somebody with hepatitis C the chances are pretty high that they're going to be exposed to it and they will contract it as well. And the other principal means of exposure is through tattooing and body art. A lot of the people who come into the system have had body art and tattoos before tattooing in a normal registered tattoo parlor is a fairly low risk for exposure to hepatitis C. The tattooing in prison or street tattooing runs a pretty high risk of transmission to hepatitis C. So those are the two means that people are exposed to it. Sometimes folks ask about

sexual exposure. That's less commonly a method of conveyance of hepatitis C. It's usually an injection drug use and body art for tattooing. Well the hepatitis C was transmitted up in Seoul. The blood supply was not effectively screened for hepatitis C or they used to call it back then non-A non-B hepatitis up until the 90s. Then when the screening techniques became implemented more effective, the blood supply was universally screened and really no longer is a risk for

transmission to hepatitis C. It's been effectively screened for nearly 20 years now. This is a potentially very expensive disease and credible burden on the public health. The treatment to cure for hepatitis C is about $30,000 for individual. It's quite a bit of money. Now in the New Mexico correction system, we do screen and treat all of our eligible individuals who would be referred for treatment. This is one of the reasons that the epidemic is so concerning to us because every transmission, every time a new person gets hepatitis C, well at least in the prison system,

that's a potential expense of $30,000 to $40,000. If you multiply that out by the number of people, just in the prison system who are incarcerated, that's a tremendous number of people, that's a tremendous cost. Project F was a very interesting innovation in the universe. I think it's being run by Dr. Sanjiro Vovara who's one of the experts in treatment of hepatitis C. One of his interests is the expanding of treatment of hepatitis C out into the communities and into the prisons. This sort of treatment requires expert oversight and since Dr. Aurora is a gastroenterologist, he provides that sort of expertise along with a whole treatment. One of the things that makes it very interesting is that the treatment team can outreach into the community and instruct and deal with providers by a length of telemedicine. Community treatment

of hepatitis C has been going on for some time now through the echo program and it is providing an immense resource for the Mexico's communities and especially rural communities where they would have no access to care for treatment of hepatitis C. That's one of the things echo those. In our system, in the correction system, we work with the ecosystem very closely and the echo providers do outreach by telemedicine every week into our prison system guiding and advising our physicians on how to treat hepatitis C. When we do treat hepatitis C aggressively in our prison system, when we do get cures, it does work. So it's really expanded the whole concept of treating this chronic infectious disease inside our prisons. Tell me, again, about the universal testing that you guys, how does that work to simply

bring when it's in the state? Well, all the inmates who come into the prison system after they've been convicted, come into a facility in Los Luna's for intake and orientation into the prison system. For the women that takes place in grants in Mexico at the women's prison. When they come in and undergo the orientation procedure and the go-regal and medical testing to determine their degree of health. When they're there, we do routine blood screening. One of the things we test for is the presence of antibodies against hepatitis C to see if these people have ever been exposed to the virus. And if the antibody tests are positive, we catch them into the system of chronic care clinics and present them to the echo program for evaluation of the hepatitis C. Now, not everybody who has hepatitis C

is going to progress to serious disease, but the people who do and the people who are at risk do get treated. So that's how we go through the process from intake to screening evaluation in the referral to treatment through the echo program at the university. You can't really think it's too much else in, kind of. Coming across, okay, if you'll kind of stiff in here, I'd like it. I think it looks really good. Thank you very much for your help.