AHC Atlantic Members Meeting – June 6-7, 2016
For those of you who weren’t there, we had a great 1.5 days of meetings in Halifax! It was a really great opportunity to connect with new members, and long-standing members that we had never met yet in person. We are awaiting the final report which we will share when it comes available, but there were many good ideas and perspectives that came out of those sessions that will have immediate impact on our plans for this year and beyond. Other than the weather and the parking, we couldn’t have asked for a better trip. Many thanks to all who participated!
The Steering Committee stuck around for an extra day to bang out some decisions and work plan revisions mid-year, and eat a donair before leaving town. Overall it was a very important and productive 3 days for the AHC.
CDEC’s Updated Recommendations present Provincial/Territorial Advocacy Opportunities:
Last month we reported that CADTH had updated their recommendations on the four curative HCV medicines that are currently approved in Canada for use on patients F0 and up, rather than F2 or higher – ie, fibrosis levels should not be an eligibility factor for treatment. (BTW, this is in line with AHC’s Position paper released last November.)
In early June the CDEC (Canadian Drug Expert Committee) released THEIR updated recommendations to be in line with those of CADTH.
As a follow up, our Policy Analyst Claire is preparing some letters to the provinces and territories, (except BC, PEI and QC) letting them know about the update, as many provinces indicate that they use the CDEC recommendations to set their own formularies. This gives us a good advocacy lever to yank on to have fibrosis scores removed completely as an eligibility factor for treatment.
If you would like support in helping to prep a friendly MPP or MLA to raise this issue in your province, let us know, we would be happy to help.
World Hepatitis Day
The AHC will be launching an e-petition on World Hepatitis Day, July 28th, through the Parliamentary website. With 500 signatures, the government will be forced to discuss our petition for a strategy that offers federal leadership to the provinces and territories toward the elimination of hepatitis C by 2030. Stay tuned for more details on this, as well as another campaign in the fall that we are really hoping you will engage in!
The World Hepatitis Alliance is hosting a Knowledge for Change Webinar Series. Recordings are posted to YouTube:
Recorded Webinar: Access to Diagnostics available here.
The next webinar in the Knowledge for Change series is An Introduction to Access to Medicines which will be held at 14:00 BST on Tuesday 12 July. Register here.