Although the world has the tools – and a plan – to eliminate hepatitis C virus (HCV), it remains a threat to global public health. Untreated HCV can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer. Each year, nearly 400,000 people die from these complications of HCV, although it has become easy to cure with 12 weeks of once-daily oral medicines, called direct-acting antivirals (DAAs). High prices have prevented access to life-saving HCV treatment across low-, middle-, and high-income countries
This community resource was developed for activists who plan to use or are using Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) flexibilities to increase access to DAA treatment for HCV in their countries.
While knowing the strength of patents on DAAs is essential, it is also important to have additional criteria for prioritizing target DAAs, such as knowing national epidemiology and DAA clinical characteristics.
This toolkit provides additional information for identifying priority DAAs, including an overview of HCV epidemiology, transmission, prevention, natural history and treatment; insight into the development of DAAs from ‘bench to bedside’; a target product profile for DAAs, HCV treatment recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO), and information about drug registration.