“Hepatitis C (HCV) is an easily curable condition.” That is the message health campaigns tend to broadcast.  Yet for many people living with hep C in rural and remote areas of New South Wales and beyond, the path from diagnosis to cure is far from easy. 

This edition of Users News draws on conversations with Rodd Hinton, NUAA’s BBV & Outreach Lead, and Andy Heslop, NUAA’s Chairperson who lives regionally himself. 

Peers On Wheels (POW) is a new pilot project NUAA has launched. The project delivers mobile peer-led testing and treatment services for hepatitis C (hep C). POW is friendly, confidential, quick and easy. POW is visiting a bunch of places in NSW over the coming months. To help spread the word to peers, we interviewed MJ, the project’s Coordinator. 

Katrina is a peer distributor for NUAA in a small rural town in NSW. She’s known she’s had hep C for 6 years but has found it hard to get treated because of the lack of services in her area and past experiences of stigma within a health care setting.

“Peer Worker” is an emerging role in the Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) space in NSW. Not only has research shown how valuable peer education and support is, services using peer workers see the difference every day as more consumers come through their doors to have more respectful and relevant interactions.

“I asked some of my mob who are living in the country about sharing injecting equipment and why they do it - or more to the point, why they don't have new, sterile fits for every hit.”