WATCH ABOVE: A resident of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is speaking out about the cost of treatments for Hepatitis C. Brody Williams says the only effective options left cost close to $100,000. John Daly reports.
A resident of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside is speaking out after being denied access to life saving Hepatitis C drugs.
Brody Williams has battled the disease for years, undergoing numerous treatments. He’s one of 200,000 Canadians struggling with the virus.
But now, a new slate of drugs with a 95% success rate are available: AbbVie’s Viekira Pak and Gilead’s Harvoni.
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“There’s pretty much a cure for this,” Williams says. “Left unattended it can be a death sentence.” Williams says he’s one of the hard to treat cases that the new drugs were designed to help.
But Williams isn’t getting the drugs. They come with a price tag of $55,860 – $100,000 for a course, and neither the federal Ministry of Indian Affairs, nor B.C.’s medical system will pay because he’s had four different drug treatment protocols already.
“I am told it will only be administered to those who have not yet gotten treatment,” he said.
Dr. Brian Conway, Medical Director of the Vancouver Infectious Diseases Centre, says his centre is doing everything it can to make the treatment available on a compassionate basis for people like Williams, who can’t get the drugs.
But he says funding in the Canadian medical system lags behind the science. “This would cost us 10-20 billion dollars to treat and cure all Canadians,” he told Global News.
“I think we need to start now by making them available in the ways we can, and making the hard choices that will make them available to as many Canadians as possible as soon as possible.”
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