Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, for calling me to move this very important motion, supported by Hefin David, Dai Lloyd, Angela Burns and Mark Isherwood.

We have started out on a journey in Wales in the last two years to identify and treat everyone who has the blood-borne virus hepatitis C. In this motion today, we are calling on the Welsh Government to reconfirm its commitment to eradicate hepatitis C in Wales by 2030, the date set by the World Health Organization. And we’re congratulating the NHS doctors and nurses for the work that they’ve already done towards treating and curing an unprecedented number of people with hepatitis C. We’re also calling for new operational guidelines to be considered by the Welsh Government that will help NHS medical staff in this difficult task. Great progress has already been made in enabling equitable and transparent access to new medicine in an affordable and responsible way. The new treatments are approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group and are cost-effective. All patients in Wales are now able to access the new highly effective antiviral drugs, and, in fact, there has been a cure rate of 95 per cent, which is so encouraging. The work is being led by the blood-borne virus group, and I’d like to pay tribute to them and to Dr Brendan Healy, who is the lead consultant. He said: ‘I’m really proud to be able to represent such an amazing team. The work and effort they have put in is phenomenal’. My contact with this group, I think, does really show the NHS at its very best.

Hepatitis C is a blood-borne virus that affects the liver. Eighty per cent of people who are infected develop chronic hepatitis C, which can cause fatal cirrhosis and liver cancer if untreated. The estimate is that 240,000 people are chronically infected with hepatitis C in the UK, and about 12,000 of these are in Wales. But the exact figure is unknown because there are so many people who have it, but don’t know that they have it. And we know that it particularly affects people from disadvantaged communities; almost half come from the poorest fifth of society.

Hepatitis C is transmitted though contact with infected blood. And it is true that the majority become infected after injecting drugs. The latest figures from the Hepatitis C Trust show that 50 per cent of injecting drug users in Wales have hepatitis C. But the virus also affects those who could possibly have had overseas medical care, and people who have had a blood transfusion in the UK before 1991, which, of course, include haemophiliacs, as I know from my work as chair of the cross-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood.

In many ways hepatitis C is a hidden disease because people can live without symptoms for decades after infection. I think we all know of the case of Anita Roddick, who founded The Body Shop, because she only discovered she had hepatitis C in 2004. She contracted it through a blood transfusion after giving birth to her daughter in 1971. So, she was actually living with this disease for 30 years without knowing it, and she died from a complication of liver disease in 2007.

I am very proud of the progress we have made so far in Wales thanks to the Welsh Government’s leadership and funding. The 2015 liver disease action plan set out a plan to eradicate hepatitis C, alongside treating other types of liver disease. A huge breakthrough came in September 2015, when the finance Minister, Jane Hutt, agreed the funding of £13.8 million for new, interferon-free drugs sofosbuvir, Harvoni and AbbVie. The funding was used to treat 466 of the most seriously ill patients with hepatitis C, and 432 were cured, including members of the haemophilia community in Wales. This has made an absolutely huge impact on these people’s lives, and the haemophiliacs have in fact been treated with the new drugs ahead of their counterparts in England, some of whom are still waiting to get help.

One example of a Welsh patient is David Thomas, who is a constituent of the Cabinet Secretary and is a member of the cross-party group on haemophilia and contaminated blood. He contracted hepatitis C through contaminated blood when he was a teenager in the 1980s and lived with it for 30 years, but was one of the first to have treatment with the new drugs, which have absolutely transformed his life, lifting a massive cloud, as he said.

So, obviously, one of the challenges now is to convince people to come forward again for treatment for hepatitis C who may previously have had failed treatment using the interferon drugs. I welcome the fact that health boards now have £25 million a year that allows 900 people a year to be tested over five years. We must ensure that that money is used to fund all the associated costs of doing this. More than 700 people were treated in 2016-17, but I understand that the problem now is finding the people who need to be tested at this point. There are currently no waiting lists for treatment. The funding and the drugs are there, but we need to identify the 50 per cent of people who have got hepatitis C but don’t know it.

The other great challenge we face in trying to eradicate hepatitis C is to reach people who are unaware of the virus because they may not be regulars at their GP surgery. As I’ve said, 50 per cent of people who have the virus are undiagnosed, according to the Hepatitis C Trust. Other groups that may be at risk of this are gym users who take performance-enhancing drugs; drug users with hepatitis C; prisoners who get tested during their sentence and may not get the results in time for their release; asylum seekers, migrants and homeless people. Everyone working on eradicating hepatitis C says that one of the biggest problems is the stigma that is attached to it, and I’m very pleased that there’s going to be a public awareness raising campaign that will be launched in Wales here in the Assembly on 11 July.

One way of tackling the lack of awareness and stigma around hepatitis C is by using peer mentors, which have proved very successful. We also need a programme to educate other health professionals about hepatitis C, not just members of the public, because it’s very important that GPs pick up on the signals and recommend testing and refer people for treatment. There is need for more health professionals to have training. Pharmacies need national agreed targets and training in dried-blood-spot testing. Community pharmacies could play a major role, as well as drug outreach projects and needle exchange centres. All the people involved in treating this blood-borne virus agree that tackling the issue in the community where they live is the key. There are lots of examples of how this is done: for example, they are testing asylum seekers and people in accident and emergency in Cardiff; in Tesco at Fforestfach in Swansea, there is a community testing room next to a gym, so gym users are getting tested; and there’s a form to improve patient management and collect data automatically that is being developed in Cardiff and in other centres.

The motion also calls for new operational guidelines to be considered to support NHS staff working to eradicate hepatitis C. We need to streamline the paperwork involved. We need to use electronic referrals to speed up the whole process of getting people treated. The medical staff would also like to see a strategic plan specifically for the elimination of hepatitis C, with all the elements fully funded, including the cost of extra lab testing and community testing.

I would like to end, really, by praising the health professionals, public health officials and the third sector organisations who are so committed to tackling this blood-borne disease. There has been a tremendous positive movement in Wales to get to the stage where we can eradicate it. It’s been the wonders of modern science, along with the commitment from the Welsh Government, to ensure that this will happen. But we do need more people to come forward for testing and I think we’d all welcome some high-profile celebrities to come out and say they have hepatitis C to help de-stigmatise the disease. So, I’m very pleased that we have begun this process of eliminating hepatitis C and I hope that the journey will end with a hepatitis C-free Wales.