LiverWELL

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 the second year of Art Inside, a project run by Hepatitis Victoria in partnership with Justice Health, the part of Corrections Victoria responsible for health and well-being of prisoners. The goal is to create a resource illustrated with prisoners art work to help educate their fellows about viral hepatitis. Justice Health recognises the virus as an important health issue inside that must be tackled.

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 forms.

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 dots on the wall she could climb through," he says.

Fred also talks about his fascination with Piranha's, the genesis for his show and his book launch in St Kilda.

St Kilda's Alright The Fred Negro Experience is on at Brightspace Gallery, 8 Martin Street, St Kilda Dec 1-17.

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 more than the number of deaths for HIV or tuberculosis.

'Unfortunately, we are not on track to eliminate viral hepatitis by 2030,' Melanie says.

'There are still massive challenges often reflected by health system dysfunction and lack of resources...even in Australia there is the slowing down of people commencing treatment for hep C, so there's much more to be done,' she says.

'There's no reason to be confident and we have to think of new ways to progress the agenda of elimination.'

#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 need to provide information on testing and treatment of hepatitis in a discrimination free workplace.

Find out more at www.hepvic.org.au

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 control for the Western Pacific Region of WHO, helping countries check how their immunisation and hepatitis B control programs are going and working with them to figure out how to make them work better."

Tilman was a founding member of the International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which was recently awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

"Like hepatitis B, nuclear war can be prevented and nuclear weapons eradicated," he says.

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.