Silent killers: Winnipegger wants to stop stigma surrounding strains of hepatitis virus

Opinion

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This article was published 26/07/2015 (3193 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Kirk Leavesley couldn’t shake his flu symptoms and he was constantly in a “brain fog.”

The normally energetic Winnipegger was desperate to find out what was wrong with his health.

After a year of medical tests, he finally had his answer: hepatitis C.

Leavesley was relieved to know the cause of his mysterious symptoms. But his diagnosis scared him.

“It left me feeling lost, frightened and… terrified… at my prospects for the future… Like, what does this mean for my life?” says Leavesley, 65.

Back then — 15 years ago — Leavesley was the first case of hepatitis C his general practitioner had ever seen.

Hepatitis is a set of viral infections that can damage the liver and even lead to liver cancer.

Hepatitis A is contracted by contaminated food or water and is usually short-lived once treated.

The B and C strains are often called silent killers because some people show no signs of infection until they become very sick. Hepatitis B is the strain that is often transmitted through blood, saliva and other body fluids. Hepatitis C is spread through contact with blood.

The World Health Organization estimates that 1.5 million people die from hepatitis every year.

Hepatitis C is a growing problem in Canada. More than 242,000 Canadians live with the virus. An estimated 5,000 of those people are Manitobans, according to the Canadian Liver Foundation.

Leavesley, a St. Boniface resident and a Vietnam war veteran, can’t be sure how he contracted it. But he believes he probably got it from the intravenous street drugs he used during his time overseas.

He walked away lucky after a series of heavy-duty and gruelling drug treatments rid his body of the virus and left his liver virtually unscathed.

But Leavesley’s frustration about the lack of knowledge at the time about his disease — and the social stigma attached to it — spurred him to found the province’s first hepatitis support group.

He also spent hours sifting through medical journals to find out all he could about hepatitis.

“So rather than get even with these people that were just making me really angry, I decided I was going to educate them,” he says.

Today, the professional singer and guitarist is a vocal advocate for those who battle hepatitis and wants to end misconceptions about it.

He says many living with the disease may not have noticeable hepatitis symptoms.

He also says baby boomers who may have experimented with drugs in the ’60s and ’70s, even just once, could have hepatitis B or C and not know it.

“You know what it was like back then. It was crazy. It was free love. Music was everywhere. It was a different time.”

He also says the governments in Canada need to improve their hepatitis-management strategy and include routine hepatitis screening for all Canadians.

He also says many new immigrants enter Canada with existing hepatitis infections, an issue that needs to be addressed.

“For the government, it’s just not a priority. That’s basically what it comes down to,” says Leavesley, who will speak at a news conference today in advance of Tuesday’s World Hepatitis Day.

Dr. Michael Dillon, a family physician at Klinic, sees many of the city’s hepatitis C patients.

He says treatments for the virus have come a long way and inflict fewer side effects.

Dillon admits that testing for the virus was difficult as recently as five years ago, because test results were often inaccurate, but the tests are improving and should be part of routine infectious-disease screening, he says.

“Everyone in the province should get the test. I don’t think family doctors should hold back on the test,” says Dillon, noting that people with hepatitis C don’t often fit a stereotype.

All kinds of people get the virus. “It’s (people like) my friends and me,” says Dillon.

 

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