The Cherokee Indians have hepatitis C infection rates almost five times higher than other racial or ethnic groups in the U.S. They're the first community within the country to set a goal of eliminating the virus from their population.
The hepatitis C project will begin by screening all member over the age of 20 and if they test positive they'll be put on the proper treatment program. The project also will work to inform healthcare providers on treating the disease as well as holding public information campaigns to increase awareness of the infection.
Most members of the Cherokee Nation and additional native groups use outreach clinics and tribal hospitals because the federal government provides health care to all American Indians. That makes hepatitis C screening an easier task, said Dr. Jorge Mera,Director of Infectious Diseases for the Cherokee Nation. Most of our patients will come in through the system at some point, Mera said. We will be able to screen them, and once we screen them and detect that they're positive, engage them in care and hopefully treat them and cure them.
One distinction being made is testing of all patients over age 20, a departure from the former strategy of singling out patients who had a history of intravenous drug use. Part of the screening process is to tests patients over the age of 20 versus the previous tactics of only testing those with a drug history. We're not doing screening based on risk factors, first because we know it doesn't work well, Mera said. Many Providers will not ask risk factors with patients. They don't have the time to do it or it is a sensitive issue.
Hepatitis C, commonly transmitted by sharing needles, can cause liver damage, cancer and death.
With the help of the University of Oklahoma, the Oklahoma state health department and federal health officials, the Cherokee Nation will b e able to enhance hepatitis C screening and implement new pharmaceutical advancements.
Mera said he hopes the partnership will lead to discoveries that will be useful nationwide. We won't be able to extrapolate what we do or find to every medical scenario in the United States, but I think everybody will learn a little bit from some of the things we did.
For more information on hepatitis C please visit [Fucoidan Force's website.](http://www.fucoidanforce.com/articles/cherokee-hepatitis-c/)
