Doctors Without Borders Successful in Treating Hepatitis C in Cambodia

Doctor holding a stethoscope
image: pexels.com

An MBA graduate of the University of Utah, Gary Teran has served as president and CEO of First Western Advisors since 1984. Outside of his professional responsibilities, Gary Teran supports a number of charitable organizations, including Doctors Without Borders. 

Doctors Without Borders provides medical care and emergency assistance across national boundaries, especially in conflict zones. In a July 2019 post published a few days before World Hepatitis Day, the international medical humanitarian organization shared that it has achieved outstanding results in treating Cambodians with hepatitis C. 

Doctors Without Borders owes these results to a collaboration with the Cambodian Ministry of Health. Through this partnership, the two organizations have implemented a more efficient screening and treatment process using direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) -- new hepatitis C drugs that are less toxic but just as effective in curing the disease. DAAs can be prescribed to patients with various stages of hepatitis, thereby eliminating the lengthy testing and pre-treatment analysis that usually takes four to five months.

Since Doctors Without Borders implemented the project in 2016, more than 13,000 patients have received treatment in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. In the last three months alone, 97 percent of those undergoing treatment have been cured.