Since 2014, Public Health England (PHE) Health and Justice has been supporting HM Prison & Probation Service (previously the National Offender Management Service) and National Health Services (NHS) England in the delivery of opt-out testing for blood-borne viruses (BBV) in all adult prisons in England. The evaluations include specific reports of offer and uptake of HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C testing within 72 hours of reception to prison as well as referral for treatment for those found infected. These data show that in England in 2016/17, 16 321 tests were conducted for hepatitis B infection, 21 268 for hepatitis C infection and 37 474 for HIV infection. The proportion of new receptions receiving tests for HCV increased from 5.3% in 2010/2011 to 11.5% in 2015/2016.

Background: People who inject drugs (PWID) account for the majority of new cases of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infec‑ tion in Europe; however, HCV testing, and treatment for PWID remain suboptimal. With the advent of direct acting antivirals (DAAs) the World Health Organization (WHO) adopted a strategy to eliminate HCV as public health threat by 2030. To achieve this, key policies for PWID must be implemented and HCV continuum of care needs to be monitored. This study presents results of the frst monitoring led by civil society that provide harm reduction services for PWID. 

Methods: In 2019, harm reduction civil society organizations representing focal points of Correlation-European Harm Reduction Network in 36 European countries were invited to complete a 27-item online survey on four strategic felds: use/impact of guidelines on HCV testing and treatment for PWID, availability/functioning of continuum of care, changes compared to the previous year and, the role of harm reduction services and non-governmental organiza‑ tions (NGOs) of PWID. A descriptive analysis of the responses was undertaken. 

Results: The response rate was 97.2%. Six countries reported having no guidelines on HCV treatment (17.1%). Twenty-three (65.7%) reported having treatment guidelines with specifc measures for PWID; guidelines that impact on accessibility to HCV testing/treatment and improve access to harm reduction services in 95.6% and 86.3% of them, respectively. DAAs were available in 97.1% of countries; in 26.4% of them they were contraindicated for active drug users. HCV screening/confrmatory tests performed at harm reduction services/community centers, prisons and drug dependence clinics were reported from 80.0%/25.7%, 60.0%/48.6%, and 62.9%/34.3% of countries, respectively. Provision of DAAs at drug dependence clinics and prisons was reported from 34.3 to 42.9% of countries, respectively. Compared to the previous year, HCV awareness campaigns, testing and treatment on service providers’ own locations were reported to increase in 42.9%, 51.4% and 42.9% of countries, respectively. NGOs of PWID conducted awareness campaigns on HCV interventions in 68.9% of countries, and 25.7% of countries had no such support. 

Conclusion: Further improvements in continuum-of-care interventions for PWID are needed, which could be achieved by including harm reduction and PWID organizations in strategic planning of testing and treatment and in eforts to monitor progress toward WHO 2030 elimination goal. 

Keywords: Hepatitis C, People who inject drugs, Continuum of care, Harm reduction, Civil society, Monitoring

Please note: there are various version of this report if you click on the file! 

This is the second civil society-led monitoring report produced by Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network (C-EHRN) within the context of our operational grant from the European Commission. The purpose of this report is to enrich the information and knowledge base of harm reduction interventions in Europe from the viewpoint of civil society organisations. We believe that this approach is a necessary, and useful, contribution to the development of drug policy in the region. We learned a lot from the former process and the 2019 edition and modified the approach, the focus and certain questions to enable respondents to report closer to their own experiences. Consequently, the information provided in this report sometimes represents the situation in a particular city or region and informs us as to the experiences of a specific organisation in the field. Such ‘real life’ information can contribute significantly to an understanding of the advantages, barriers and challenges of drug policy. Even stronger, we directly approached representatives of networks and organizations of people who use drugs to share their view on the developments with us. 2020, however, was not a regular year and the world wide pandemic had its influence on people, organisations and the care system in general. Accordingly, we added a section on the impact of COVID-19 on harm reduction services and we will continue to measure this impact. We will use the insights and information collected in this report within our advocacy efforts to strengthen harm reduction policies in Europe and, we hope, our partners and contributors will do the same in their environment at a regional and national level. More than one hundred organisations and individuals from 34 European countries have contributed to the collection of data with an amazingly high response rate; we thank all contributors for their great work and commitment. Without their engagement, this work would never have been undertaken at all. In particular, we would like to thank the authors of this report, Rafaela Rigoni, Tuukka Tammi, Daan van der Gouwe, and Victoria Oberzil, who were supported by the coordinators of the expert groups and the reviewers of this report. We are also grateful to HRI and Robert Czack for contributing with a chapter to this report. A special thanks to Dagmar Hedrich and her EMCDDA colleagues for their ongoing and patient support. We thank the European Commission, DG Sante, for their financial support and to the Regenboog Groep, Amsterdam, for their ongoing support of Correlation – European Harm Reduction Network