Four Nagaland-based groups, fighting for the rights of HIV-positive and Hepatitis C patients, have filed a PIL against the Union health ministry and the state government in the Kohima bench of Gauhati High Court for their alleged failure to address the “growing burden” of the disease.

The court heard the PIL on Thursday. It was filed by the Access to Rights and Knowledge Foundation (ARN), Nagaland Users’ Network (Nun), Network of Naga People Living with HIV/AIDS and the Hepatitis Coalition of Nagaland (HepCon) on Tuesday. The court said the case amounted to a matter of “public interest”. The judge also ordered the state and central governments to file the status of Hepatitis C within five weeks and will have the next hearing in November.

“Generally, when a PIL is filed, a review is carried out. But in this case, the judge said this was a public interest matter and decided to hear the case on Thursday. The court told the two respondents (the Nagaland government and the Centre) to file a status report on Hepatitis C in five weeks,” said Ketholelie Angami, the secretary of HepCon and coordinator of Nun.

Activists have said that though Hepatitis C is curable with treatment lasting from six months to a year, several patients continue to die because of lack of awareness and high treatment costs.

“There is no proper strategy in tackling the epidemic afflicting Nagaland and there are no guidelines. Both the Centre and the Nagaland government have not been able to address the hepatitis burden and not being able to provide treatment. Hence, the four groups decided to file the PIL,” Angami said.

“Without any proper programmes on Hepatitis C in Nagaland and the National AIDS Control Organisation (Naco) campaigns focusing only on HIV prevention and the transmission of the virus through used needles and syringes, the development of a programme to treat hepatitis C has been neglected,” he added.

An integrated bio-behavioural assessment study done among intravenous drug users in 2006-09 revealed that Hepatitis-C virus prevalence rate in Phek district was at 5.4 per cent in 2006, which increased to 8.7 per cent in 2009, and 16.7 per cent in 2006 to 20.8 per cent in Wokha district.

According to a seven-year rapid screening report of the Naga Hospital Authority of Kohima, the presence of hepatitis-C virus among the general population was at 1.8 per cent, which activists and patients cited as a significant public health concern and not just among the intravenous drug users.