Hepatitis C: data on hepatitis C

Public Health Scotland estimates that in August 2023, 4,036 people living in Scotland were diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C infection. Further undiagnosed cases likely remain in the community.

Of those infected in Scotland, 26.1% reside in Greater Glasgow, 15.9% in Lothian, 12.3% in Lanarkshire and 11.4% in Grampian, with the remaining 34.3% residing in other health board areas. Two thirds of infected persons are male and the majority are under the age of 50.

In 2022, 1,018 new cases of hepatitis C were diagnosed, which is consistent with the drastic decrease in incidence reported in 2020 and 2021 (Chart 1). This reflects both the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on testing coverage in key settings, as well as a potentially shrinking population with undiagnosed infection.

Hepatitis C affects disproportionately the most deprived populations. Chart 2 shows that the majority of people diagnosed with Hepatitis C live in either the most deprived (49% of HCV infections) or the 2nd most deprived (24% of HCV infections) areas of Scotland. The SIMD quintile is unknown for 16% of HCV antibody diagnoses.

UK 

The UK Health Security Agency’s report Hepatitis C in the UK 2023 estimated that around 92,900 people in the UK had chronic hepatitis C (HCV) infection at the end of 2021. This equates to a prevalence of 0.17% in the population and a 47.2% reduction from 2015. Treatment uptake in Scotland exceeded the UK average between 2015 and 2020, with 86.9% of diagnosed patients linked to specialist treatment services compared to 74.9% across the UK as a whole. This is likely due to expansion of screening initiatives and improved availability of effective direct-acting antivirals in recent years.

In Scotland, the proportion of people who inject drugs who have ever had a HCV infection has been relatively stable for a number of years. However, the proportion of people with active infection decreased to 19.3% in 2019/20. A similar trend is observed in England, Northern Ireland and Wales with a reduction in active infections to 14.4% in 2021 compared to 28.1% in 2015.