25 September 2015 - A group of campaigning patients and doctors has launched a Dallas Buyers' Club-style operation to help Australia's estimated 233,000 hepatitis C sufferers get new life-saving drugs without paying astronomical bills.

The move comes after the Kirby Institute for infection and immunity in society published a report showing the number of Australians with hep-C related severe liver disease has more than doubled in 10 years.

The FixHepC Buyers Club has been set up to import new wonder drugs such as Harvoni and Sovaldi from China, instead of waiting for Gilead Sciences, the American pharmaceutical giant which owns the patents, to negotiate a price with the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

The drugs are said to have a 95 per cent success rate, with sufferers taking a pill a day for 12 weeks with few side effects, instead of undergoing a year-long debilitating course of treatment using drugs like interferon, where success rates fall to 50 per cent.

While the final price of the Gilead drugs in Australia is not yet known, the price in America is a staggering $US84,000 ($A116,000), which works out at $1000 a pill, though countries like France have negotiated lower rates.

For more details, go to: http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/hepatitis-c-drug-buyers-club-aims-to-set-up-new-source-of-support-20150924-gjts1t.html