Hepatitis C Point-of-Care Testing Program

The Kirby Institute at UNSW Sydney and the Flinders University International Centre for Point-of-Care Testing have been funded by the Commonwealth Department of Health to establish a Australian Hepatitis C Point-of-Care Testing Program, consisting of a network of sites to scale up point-of-care Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) RNA testing in settings providing services to people at high risk of acquiring HCV infection.

The Australian Hepatitis C Point-of-Care Testing Program will be the first internationally to implement scale-up of point-of-care Hepatitis C RNA testing on treatment uptake among people at-risk of HCV in a range of different healthcare settings, providing critical information on this approach toward reducing HCV prevalence in Australia. The Australian Hepatitis C Point-of-Care Testing Program will be sufficiently broad to enable engagement across all priority populations highlighted in state-based and national hepatitis strategies, including people who inject drugs and/or are accessing drug treatment programs, people who previously injected drugs, people in custodial settings and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.