A pandemic has turned into a help, not a hindrance, to Otago efforts to stamp out hepatitis from the Pacific nation of Niue.
A year ago, Dunedin hepatitis campaigner Hazel Heal, backed by a team of academics and clinicians, set out to eradicate viral hepatitis on Niue.
The ambitious plan required the country’s entire population of about 1200 adults to be tested for hepatitis B and C and then treated if positive, a task made a great deal easier by Niue rolling out a Covid-19 vaccination programme for its citizens.
"The vaccination programme meant that everyone was sitting around for 15 minutes after they had had their shot, which was the perfect time to also do a hepatitis test," Ms Heal said.
"It was actually better because our original plan had been to helicopter in and do everything because we didn’t want to extract resources from the local health system, but that is not really repeatable as a worldwide model for how to eliminate hepatitis.
"Empowering the local health system to do it themselves is repeatable and was far better and cost-effective."
At the cost of $US95,000 ($NZ150,000), the hard work had been done, and now Niue was awaiting official World Health Organisation sign off that it had indeed eliminated viral hepatitis.
Ms Heal, a Dunedin lawyer who dreamed up the project, and Dunedin Hospital specialist nurse practitioner Margaret Fraser were due to be in Niue this week for a function to mark both World Hepatitis Day and the successful end of the project, but the wild weather on Monday meant they were unable to get to Auckland in time to catch the one flight each week from New Zealand to Niue.
The women will participate remotely, perhaps fittingly as pandemic public health requirements have meant Otago practitioners have had to spend much less time in the islands than they had planned at the start of the programme.
"Covid meant our choices were give up, postpone, or do it differently and better, and we chose that," Ms Heal said.
"We ran it remotely, the health service in Niue did everything and we supported them with testing, advice and materials and extra funding because we couldn’t go and help ourselves.
"I am very proud of the team up there, who got through it. It is a real lesson for the world."
Although the Niue programme has come to an end, Ms Heal’s campaign to stamp out hepatitis — a chronic but treatable liver ailment which can cost as much as $2 million over the lifetime of a patient to manage if it is not tackled — has not.
The WHO had been closely watching the progress of the Niue campaign and was keen for it to be rolled out elsewhere.
"This is a model. The WHO was impressed and want to quantify it and set criteria around it for smaller nations," Ms Heal said.
"Kiribati is a country I am looking at assisting next.
"It has extremely high rates of viral hepatitis, 30 or 40%, and it is really chronically afflicting their population, and we have people on the ground there who are interested."
