Cities have tasked police and sanitation workers with dismantling homeless camps that they say pose a risk to health and safety. But that's meant some displaced people are losing needed medications.
Many people don't know which shots they need as they get older. And the vaccines can be tougher to keep track of because many adults go to the doctor less frequently than kids do.
Mavyret, recently approved by the Food And Drug Administration, can cure hepatitis C in eight weeks, at a cost of $26,400. Though still expensive, that's well below the price of other options.
As the nation's opioid abuse problem soars, so do health problems associated with drug use like hepatitis C, which is placing a major burden on Alaska's Medicaid program.
Most of the millions in the U.S. who are infected with hepatitis C can't afford the cure. Some say the U.S. could save money and cure more people if it bought the drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc.
His doctor injected him with a used syringe. Millions of people have contracted HIV, hepatitis and other diseases that way. The solution: a syringe designed to prevent reuse.
In 2007, seven people were infected with hepatitis C, making it one of the worst outbreaks in Las Vegas history. Local doctor Dipak Desai was charged criminally for unsafe injections. One of those victims recently died, which could bring murder charges against Desai. Rodolfo Meana had gone home to the Philippines to die, saying hepatitis C had changed his whole life. Reporter Paul Harasim tells us about Rodolfo's life, and the repercussions of the hepatitis outbreak.
