Hepatitis C in Nigeria, part 2: Marie’s Story

This is the second part of my post on Hepatitis C in Nigeria; this is Marie’s story. Marie agreed to share her story to help give an insight into the problems faced for people in low income situations around the world. People for whom even the price of generic Hepatitis C medication is impossible.

For me this story is both wonderful and terrible.

It is wonderful because I was able to help one person and her family to win the battle against Hepatitis C and Marie left sickness and sorry behind and is now well and healthy.

It is terrible because Marie is just one of around 2 million Nigerians infected with Hepatitis C and there is nothing I can really do to help all those people except by telling their story.

To God be the glory, I would like to share my short story of how I learned that I have hepatitis c & the way God helped me to come out of it.

I pray that my story will be giving hope to others who have this sickness.

I live in the nation of Nigeria where I am a widow 49 years old.

My husband died of liver failure some years ago and my heart is heavy when I think of him. I miss him very much.

I think it maybe I caught Hepatitis C from my husband because he died of liver disease. But I do not know because no-one knew of this sickness when he died.

When I began feeling sick every day my church say to me that it is good for me to go & do the test but is only antibody test because the viral load test I can not pay for… it is too much.

When I knew I have Hep c I went  to see my doctor and I talked about it with my doctor and she advised me not to take alcohol, have outside sex, especial me being a widow. But she say is not the end of life for me but I was always sick and weak with pains.

And I had no hope because the doctor said, the medications is costing 300,000 naira.

After  I came back home from the doctor no sleeping came to my eyes every night. I was awake wondering how can I get that money; I’m a widow, just working as just a church cleaner paying me #30,000 naira per month.

 In bed I think that my husband die with liver sickness. The doctor said this Hep C will lead to liver sickness for me and I know that so soon I will die, because I can’t get this money of the medication, with 7 children’s what should I do?

I was sick and every day was a struggle to get us what we needed to eat.

Then through the kindness of God I discovered Mr Greg Jefferys and he helped me to get the medicine I needed.

For me it was like a miracle for soon my pains ended and my energy returned to me. Now I am strong and never weak again and it is not a struggle to feed my children

To God be the glory and thanks to Mr Greg Jeffery’s helped me to be alive again so may him live long so that he continue to help people like me. I wish the world would please do something for Nigerians living with Hepatitis C.

So, Nigeria is just one example of one poor country in Africa. The same story of poverty and inability to access treatment is repeated in every other African nation and also every country in Latin America and Asia and even Eastern European countries.

Continental Africa has a population of about one billion people. A rough guess would be that there would be about 40 million people in Africa with Hepatitis C.

Latin America is likely to have about the same infection rate, so it is likely that the WHO figure of a global Hepatitis C infection rate of between 70 million and 100 million is conservative.

Hep C infection rates in Nigeria exceed 3% so there are more than 2 million people infected with Hep C in Nigeria. About half of those are earning between $50 and $100 per month

In the wealthy western countries like north America and Europe many people are doing the big Song and Dance routine about Hep C treatment because Big Pharma sponsored advocacy groups have pressured governments into paying obscene prices for Hepatitis C medication.

What this means is the GILEAD and ABBVEE and making vast fortunes out of Hep C in first world countries, where the infection rates are lowest and ignoring the people who can not pay.

In other words, of the approximately 100 million people infected with Hepatitis C, only a few million of them actually have access to treatment.

Statistically approximately one percent of people infected with Hepatitis C will die from its effect each year.

If we accept that globally about 100 million people are infected with Hepatitis C this means that 1 million people will die in the next 12 months from a disease that is easy and cheap to cure.

Of course, this figure does not even consider the tens of millions suffering debilitating sickness and misery. This figure does not consider the suffering of families watching their mothers, fathers and children slowly dying from a disease that should cost less than US$50 to cure.

All this death, misery and suffering is happening simply because of the extraordinary greed of the US pharmaceutical industry and the people who run it.

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