City Health Budget Undercuts Hepatitis C Care In Queens

Queens hepatitis patients are flocking to doctors’ offices in the borough while the City Health Dept., undermined by Mayor Giuliani’s budget slashes, wonders what to do about the problem.
In an exclusive article last month, The Queens Courier revealed that tens of thousands of Hepatitis C patients are discovering symptoms emerging from dirty needles administered 15 to 20 years ago in their homeland.
Now these residents of the borough’s many ethnic communities are seeking medical assistance. But needed screening and treatment programs have not been put in place because of fiscal problems that strangle health care initiatives.
One promising development called The Turning Point Initiative, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and administered by the City Health Dept., was launched last Nov. 12 at York College and involved the participation of hundreds of community workers from dozens of Queens organizations. They met for hours at fashioning a series of health priorities that needed to be addressed.
But since that meeting six months ago there has been little visible progress in solving any of the City’s health problems. In fact, the 42-page Queens Turning Point report makes no mention of hepatitis, even though it is among the borough’s most significant health hazards.
The Department calls the City’s health needs "a complex problem" and says Turning Point is not the solution, but a means of gaining grass roots support from providers, including hospitals, physicians and schools.
Health Dept. officials insist that in the intervening six months discussions have been held and a shared responsibility for health matters is beginning to gel.
It is no surprise, of course, that funding is in short supply in a City in which the Mayor makes severe cuts in the budgets of the Health Dept. and the Health & Hospitals Corp.
But Health Dept. spokesperson Sandra Mullin assures that important fund questions will get addressed soon.
"This is a year of meetings and discussions," she said.
Meanwhile, in an eye-opening editorial from a recent issue of the British medical journal, The Lancet, hepatitis C is called "an especially vexing problem for public health officials."
The editorial points out that there are no reliable symptoms in at least 80 percent of newly infected patients and chronic liver disease develops insidiously and takes decades to appear.
The Lancet reports that many local health departments — especially those in large, urban areas — which are already underfunded and pressured by the AIDS epidemic cannot hope to carry out yet another massive public education, testing and surveillance program.
The journal reports that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) "provide a reasoned and thorough blueprint for controlling an epidemic the dimensions of which have only recently been measured."
It said that nearly four million Americans –or 1.8 percent of the U.S. population have been infected by Hepatitis C. It causes from 8,000-10,000 deaths and costs over $600 million in medical bills and work loss each year.
Lancet also notes that the CDC lacks the money to help out the unfunded city health departments.
Last month, City Health Dept. Commissioner Neal Cohen testified before the City Council’s health committee and outlined plans for a Hepatitis C public education program. It called for the expenditure of a little more than $100,000 for the year. This program is miniscule compared to the needs of our population.
It’s regrettable that in a City known for its international leadership in health care and medical centers capable of providing the most sophisticated tertiary care, we are seemingly unable to make a dent in the outbreak of hepatitis.