LiverWELL

The social stigma around viral hepatitis is deadly, contributing to up to 6 deaths a week in Victoria alone, a greater burden than the state road toll. On 17 March Hepatitis Victoria CEO Melanie Eagle was invited into the JoyFM studio to talk about the launch of #StigmaStops, a year-long campaign to raise awareness and help tackle stigma launched on Zero Discrimination Day earlier this month.

Meg Perrier, Hepatitis B Outreach Project Officer is running a joint project with Cohealth and the Wingate Avenue Community Centre in Ascot Vale, to raise awareness about hepatitis B and get people at risk treated. "...For those born overseas, more often than not they were born in countries with high endemic countries of hepatitis B," she says. The project at Wingate Avenue has introduced an educa...

#StigmaStops Stories is a monthly series from Hepatitis Victoria were we talk with people living with hepatitis about their experiences facing stigma. Allan Dumbleton is a HEP Hero who was recently cured of hep C. This is his story.

HEP Hero Allan Dumbleton talks about his experience getting cured of hepatitis C. It took three treatments, two with the Direct Acting Anti Virals, but finally Allan was cured. "When they told me my viral load was negative- that day will remain with me forever, a great weight was lifted," he says. Allan also talks about the stigma he experienced and says what he wished he should have done to comba...

Hep Hero Margaret Hellard on the stigma people face living with hepatitis by LiverWELL

Art Inside 2017: Educating prisoners about viral hepatitis through self-expression   “People in prison are at least 20 times more likely to have hepatitis than the rest of the population and we think at least a quarter of the prison population has hepatitis C, but not everyone gets tested and the number with the virus is likely to be higher”.   Health Promotion Officer Sione Crawford is managing t...

Dr Bruce Bolam is the Victorian Government's Chief Preventative Health Officer. He spoke at Hepatitis Victoria's Forum on Stigma and Discrimination held at the Melbourne Town Hall on 7 December 2017. In this short interview, he talks about the negative barriers stigma creates around hepatitis, the health impacts as a result, and why it is important to confront stigma and discrimination in all its...

The 'Love Your Liver' campaign is promoted and supported by Chinese media stakeholders @3CW1341 @SBSCantonese. This interview with HepVic's Aurora Tang, was broadcast in Mandarin on 5 December 2017. An interview broadcast on SBS in Cantonese on 7 December is available here: https://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/cantonese/zh-hant/audiotrack/hepvic-love-your-liver-campaign?language=zh-hant

Fred Negro has been drawing 'lovely livers' for the past 10 years. His whimsical liver cartoons are a popular feature in the Good Liver magazine and have attracted quite a following. As a child Fred says he made his own stick figure comics. "I used to like Little Dot comics... Little Dot was a collector of dots. She had boxes full of dots and all her clothes were covered with dots, and she had dot...

Hepatitis Victoria CEO Melanie Eagle attended the World Hepatitis Summit 2017 in Brazil recently and came back with some unsettling news. Despite clear progress in countries like Egypt, China and Brazil, the world is clearly not on track to reach the goal of eliminating viral hepatitis by 2030. An estimated 1.4 million people died of hepatitis related diseases in 2016, a mournful total that is mor...

#Red speaks with Melanie Eagle, CEO is urging Victorians to "Love your liver" a heartfelt campaign in Melbourne’s north-west urging testing and treatment

HEPReady Business Development Manager, Reece Lamshed talks about why pharmacists are such an important ally in the fight against hepatitis. "For many people in the community pharmacists have always been a first point of call for health, now we are training them to help us in the struggle against hep B and hep C," he says. The HEPReady course gives pharmacists the comprehensive information they nee...

Tilman Ruff is one of Hepatitis Victoria's latest HepHeros. He has spent the past 20 years fighting to get hep B vaccinations to vulnerable populations in the Asia Pacific. "For about 20 years I assisted national immunisation programs in Pacific island countries with hepatitis B control and more broadly, working with WHO and UNICEF," Tilman says. "Now I serve on an expert committee on hepatitis B...

Frank and Melanie both gave moving talks about what they see as the progress and challenges for the hepatitis community in the coming months and years.

At Hepatitis Victoria's 25th Anniversary event, Master of Ceremonies and HepHero Steve Taylor talked to Rhonda McCaw and Julie Shiels about the early days and how the organisation was founded. Its a fascinating discussion, that reveals not only how far we have come, but also how far we have to go.

Sione Crawford is a Health Promotion Project Officer at Hepatitis Victoria. He recently attended the 6th International Symposium on Hepatitis Care in Substance Users, held in New York. He talks about the insights he gained from the symposium, including the vastly disparate ways treatment is provided in different parts of the world, and the United States, and how stigma and ignorance is preventing...