Healthy Steps Announces Hepatits C Pilot Program
Berkshire Health System's harm reduction organization Healthy Steps announced a pilot program for the treatment of Hepatitis C at Tuesday's Board of Health meeting.
Healthy Steps is a harm reduction syringe exchange program out of Berkshire Medical Center that began in 2017. It works primarily with active-injection drug users to discard used needles and provide them with sterile supplies in hopes of preventing the transfer of HIV and Hepatitis C.
The Hepatitis C Pilot Program was developed in June by BMC's Infectious Disease Provider Rachel Picone. Picone started the program because of the struggle that Hep C positive individuals face when trying to obtain treatment, especially when they are current injection-drug users.
The program sees an average of 20 walk-ins a day and tests an average of 50 people a month.
Recently, the program cleared four patients of Hepatitis C. This is a great achievement because its number of cleared patients has been 0 since 2017.
Read more on this program and other features a iBerkshires.tCom.
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