Nermeen Nabil Ashoush
The British University in Egypt, Egypt
Title: Economic evaluation of direct acting antivirals therapy in chronic hepatitis C
Biography
Biography: Nermeen Nabil Ashoush
Abstract
Hepatitis C is a chronic health problem affecting approximately 180 million people worldwide. Chronic hepatitis C is one of the main causes of end-stage liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma that have a clinical and economic burden on hepatitis C virus (HCV) patients.
Over the past few years, new medicines for HCV infection have begun to transform the treatment landscape; the development of new regimens involving direct acting antivirals (DAAs) have been so successful that disease experts are heralding an era where all HCV patients of all genotypes can be cured, even debating whether eradication is possible.
These novel agents seem to facilitate the use of shortened courses of combination interferon-free therapy, which are associated with high (>95%) sustained response rates and relatively few toxicities. These regimens have also been successful in patients who were previously difficult to treat, including those with cirrhosis. The main drawback of these new agents is the huge price tag, which will make treatment out of reach for people in the developed and developing world. Understanding the balance between costs and efficacy is critical to making decisions about the optimal use of these new agents, especially for health-care systems constrained by rising costs. Our goal for this workshop is to facilitate an understanding of the importance of health economics and pharmacoeconomics evaluations in guiding policy decisions about the use of newly approved drugs as well as future therapies.
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