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A new anti-Hepatitis C campaign was launched today to combat the growing number of Tasmanians being diagnosed with the disease.
The ‘Hep in Tas’ campaign, launched by the Tasmanian Council on AIDS, Hepatitis and Related Diseases (TasCAHRD) is the first Tasmanian-specific campaign of its kind.
The campaign will consist of television adverts that will run over four weeks and a new dedicated website (hepintas.com ).
TasCAHRD CEO Kevin Marriott told GayTAS, “This is the first time we’ve gone to such lengths on a single campaign”, admitting the number of new diagnoses each year in Tasmania was very worrying.
“When you compare our diagnosis rate by head of population with other states, Tasmania has one of the highest,” Marriott said.
“One of the problems is there’s still a lot of stigma attached to Hep-C, so people don’t like to talk about it. Putting the message out there on commercial TV we hope will be one way to get through that.”
“Hopefully people will take the basic information from the ad, go to the website and get informed,” Marriott said.
There are plans to launch the TV ad on YouTube and also the hepintas.com site in the near future.
There are currently around 3,500 people living with Hepatitis C in Tasmania, with 348 new diagnoses in 2008 alone.
"We hope using Tasmanian-specific data will go a long way to making people realise this is a real issue here," Marriott said.
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