The chronic infection kills at least 10,000 people every year and is the leading reason for liver transplants, according to the American Liver Foundation. As more long-term infections begin to wear down patients' defenses, the death rate from hepatitis C during the next two decades is expected to triple, according to officials with The Centers for Disease Control. Symptoms in the later stages of hepatitis C can include jaundice, abdominal pain, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting and fatigue. But not always. But people don't usually say to themselves, 'Oh, I'm tired.
Testing is also haphazard, inconclusive and expensive.
If we don't know who is infected, we're not able to study the population. If we don't know what fraction of the population is infected, we can't survey the cases or intervene before people get sick. Hepatitis C, caused by a virus that settles into the liver, is one of the most serious forms of the disease. While the actual number of new infections is much smaller than for hepatitis A or B, hepatitis C is the most tenacious of the trio. More than 85 percent of those infected will go on to develop a festering infection that lasts a lifetime, and about one in four will end up with cirrhosis and liver failure.