The Hepatitis C Trust is the national UK charity for hepatitis C with offices in London and Edinburgh and has been operating since 2001. It is a patient-led and patient-run organisation: most of the board, staff, and volunteers either have hepatitis C or have had it and have cleared it after treatment.

The over-arching goal is to shut down because they are no longer needed, in other words because hepatitis C has been eliminated in the UK. Historically, hepatitis C has been neglected, partly because there has been no concerted patient voice and because it is often wrongly stigmatised as a drug user’s disease. The Trust is committed to changing this, by:

Raising public awareness that this is a virus that can be contracted in many ways.
Ending discrimination against people living with hepatitis C.
Creating an active community of patients willing to stand up and be heard.

The Trust’s mission is to reverse the rapidly increasing death toll caused by hepatitis C in the UK until no-one dies from this preventable and treatable disease and, ultimately, it is all but eradicated in this country.

To achieve this they run a range of projects and services that fall broadly into 5 areas:

Information
Support
Representation
Awareness raising
Research

They are also actively involved in leading international advocacy efforts. The Trust firmly believes in patient-centred medicine and is committed the principle of to continually increasing the opportunities at the organisation for people employment with hepatitis C, both as paid staff and as volunteers.