England is on track to become one of the first countries in the world to eliminate hepatitis C as a public health threat, according to new data released by NHS England, with treatment numbers and falling death rates putting the country ahead of the World Health Organization's global elimination timeline.
More than 100,000 people have been diagnosed and treated for the virus through the NHS since 2015, when a national roll-out of modern antiviral tablets began. Those drugs, taken for eight to 12 weeks, cure more than 95% of cases. NHS England says the programme has already exceeded the WHO's benchmark of treating 80% of known cases, and deaths linked to the virus have fallen by 36% over the past decade — progress officials say puts England within reach of the WHO's 2030 target of a 65% reduction in hepatitis C mortality compared with 2015 levels.
The WHO's elimination criteria also call for diagnosing 90% of people living with the virus. England is not there yet: health officials estimate around 50,200 adults are still living with hepatitis C, of whom roughly 84.6% have been diagnosed. Closing that remaining gap has become the focus of NHS testing drives, including opt-out blood testing in accident and emergency departments, screening offered at GP registration for patients born abroad or who had transfusions before 1996, and a free home-testing service at hepctest.nhs.uk that has been running for several years.
A liver disease in retreat
Hepatitis C is a blood-borne virus that attacks the liver and, left untreated, can cause cirrhosis, liver failure or cancer over years or decades. Before modern antivirals, treatment involved lengthy courses of injected interferon with severe side effects and modest cure rates. The newer direct-acting antivirals, negotiated into an NHS supply deal in 2019, transformed the outlook, and NHS England estimates the programme could cut demand for liver transplants linked to the virus by roughly 80% over the coming decade.
With hepatitis C curable in more than nine out of ten cases, we are committed to finding and treating everyone.
Prof. Frankie Swords, NHS national medical director
The Hepatitis C Trust, a charity that has campaigned for elimination, said the country is nearing a landmark moment. Rachel Halford, the charity's chief executive, said England is "on the cusp of one of the most significant public health achievements in our country's history." Dr Sema Mandal of the UK Health Security Agency called treating more than 100,000 people in a decade "a remarkable achievement," while cautioning that finding people who remain undiagnosed, often from marginalised or hard-to-reach groups, remains the harder part of the task.
NHS England says it is expanding testing and introducing a national patient management system in 2026-27 to track outstanding cases, as it aims to confirm formal elimination status with the WHO before the end of the decade.
