Footnotes

• Funding National Health and Medical Research Council (Early Career Fellowship, Postdoctoral Fellowship, Senior Research Fellowship).

• Competing interests None declared.

• Provenance and peer review Commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

• ↵i Global estimates of the prevalence of hepatitis C virus in the population vary greatly. Mathers et al reported midpoint country estimates ranging from 0.02% (India and Cambodia) to 5.21% (Azerbaijan). In Western Europe (with the exception of the Netherlands, where there is very little reported injecting drug use) the prevalence ranged from 0.13% (Greece) to 0.83% (Italy). In countries like the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, estimated prevalences are close to 1%.41

• ↵ii As outlined earlier, estimated HCV prevalences in the national populations of PWID vary greatly, ranging from 10% to 97%.6 ,7