Female Speaker: Norman Quinn, a firefighter in Hallandale Beach, Florida for the past 25 years is experienced with helping others.
Norman Quinn: As a firefighter paramedic, I spend most of my career on the rescue job.
Female Speaker: But sometimes his job has hazards even he doesn't know about.
Norman Quinn: I responded to a call in our city jail, the patient was a prisoner. Her mouth was, and gums were covered with blood and she opened her eyes and spit in my face.
Female Speaker: Chief Quinn contracted hepatitis C from that encounter, but he didn't know it until 10 years later when he had a routine blood test.
Ira Jacobson: Many people with hepatitis C, or for that matter many other chronic liver diseases don't know they have anything wrong with them because the liver is a very silent organ.
Female Speaker: Hepatitis C is a virus that causes the liver to become inflamed. In some cases the Hepatitis C Virus or HCV causes scarring of the liver called cirrhosis and this can lead to liver cancer, liver failure and death. It is transmitted primarily through contact with blood or body fluids contaminated with blood. The people who are mostly commonly at risk include IV drug users, healthcare workers and hemodialysis patients but others can also contract the virus.
Male Speaker: The sharing of razor blades in household, household contacts can become infected, body piercing, tattoos; these are all risk factors for developing hepatitis C.
Jorge Lopez: When somebody goes into a tattoo or piercing, the person who goes there, they don't know if that syringe and the needle is sterile. And also in the ink, if one patient is infected and goes to tattooing or piercing, that ink can contain the virus.
Female Speaker: When symptoms are apparent for HCV, they are very similar to that of the flu, extreme fatigue, mild fever, nausea, vomiting, some patients may have diarrhea, dark urine and light-colored stools. Some may develop a yellow cast to the eyes and skin called jaundice, but often they are no symptoms. There are effective treatments however.
Male Speaker: There are anti-viral therapies that attack the actual virus at the RNA level and destroy the virus, there are anti-viral therapies that attack the coat of the virus and destroy them.
Female Speaker: The anti-viral medicine Ribavirin is used with Interferon to help stop the hepatitis C virus from making new copies of itself and allow the immune system to kill the HCV. The cure rate with this therapy is somewhere between 30% and 50%. Those who aren't cured are called non-responders. And even if patients don't respond the first time around, doctors say the treatment may actually set the livers clock back a few years.
Male Speaker: So for every year on therapy, we buy you about six or seven years of fibrosis free living.
Female Speaker: Patients can live with hepatitis C for many years even if they don't respond to treatments. But if the disease progresses to the end stage, liver transplantation is the only option. There is a waiting list though.
Eugene Schiff: Unfortunately in this country there are more candidates for liver transplantation than there are donor organs available.
Female Speaker: Every one in high risk category should be tested.
Male Speaker: My message for the patient who is a chronic carrier of hepatitis C and feels well, see a doctor understand that there is treatment available and be very hopeful.
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