Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C, hep C, or HCV is a virus that infects the body and can damage the liver over the course of several decades. Typically folks who carry the virus will not know they are infected – it doesn’t instantly make you sick! Some people who become infected with the virus can fight it off and get rid of it. Other folks who don’t fight it off right after contracting it can carry it around for ten, twenty, or thirty years before they start to develop liver cancer or liver failure.

Nope! There is a vaccine for the other two most common types of hepatitis (A and B), but there is no vaccine for hepatitis C.

Hep C is primarily transmitted through sharing injection equipment: rigs and works. This includes syringes AND everything else you might use when preparing a shot: cottons / filters, cookers / spoons, ties / tourniquets, waters, and alcohol wipes. Hep C can stay alive outside of the body and live on your rigs and works for up to three weeks. Hepatitis C can also spread when blood from an infected person contaminates a surface and
then that surface is reused by another person to prepare injection equipment.

Nope! It’s not possible to give yourself hep C. Unlike the bacteria that naturally live on your skin (and can sometimes get into your blood and cause an infection through a shot), hep C doesn’t live on your body. You have to come into contact with someone else’s blood to get it.

Probably not. There is some evidence that bleach kills HIV, but rinsing rigs with bleach is not guaranteed to be strong enough to get rid of HCV.

To clean a syringe with bleach:
1. Rinse the syringe with COLD water a few times. You can do this by drawing cold water in to the syringe.
2. Fill the syringe with pure bleach. Leave the bleach in the syringe for AS CLOSE TO 2 minutes as possible. The longer the bleach rests in the syringe the greater the chance HCV will be killed.
3. After 2 minutes push all of the bleach out of the syringe.
4. Fill and empty the syringe with COLD water at least 3 times. You want to make sure all bleach is out of the syringe. Injecting bleach into your veins can be harmful as well as painful.

Yep! In 2013 a new drug became available that will completely cure hep C in 100% of people. It comes in pill form and needs to be taken everyday for three months. If you have private health
insurance, it will cover the treatment costs. If you have AmeriHealth or Iowa Medicaid, right now the treatment will only be covered if you have advanced liver disease (meaning you’ve
probably had the virus for a long time) AND if you have a clean urine drug test three times in three months.

Unfortunately yes. But the risk of transmission from sexual contact is believed to be low. The risk increases for those who have multiple sex partners, have a sexually transmitted disease, engage in rough sex, or are infected with HIV.