The incidence and prevalence of patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is growing. However, the true worldwide incidence remains unknown due to heterogeneous registration and case definitions (European Centre for Desease Prevention Control, 2010). Overall, it is believed that the diagnosed global prevalence of HCV is approximately 2.0% (1.7–2.3%) for adults, which corresponds to approximately 104 (87–124) million persons world-wide (Table (Table1;1; McGowan et al., 2013; Mohd Hanafiah et al., 2013; European Association for the Study of the Liver, 2014; Hope et al., 2014; Wedemeyer et al., 2015). Others have suggested higher figures at 2.8% globally (Lemoine and Asia, 2014), leading to estimated prevalence rates of 150–184 million world-wide (Ramachandran et al., 2012; Mohd Hanafiah et al., 2013; Lemoine and Asia, 2014; Phelan and Cook, 2014; Barua et al., 2015; Cure et al., 2015; Norton, 2015; Fraser et al., 2016), with approximately 85% of patients living in low to middle income (LMIC) countries (Phelan and Cook, 2014). However, estimated figures for South Africa are lower at 0.1–1.7% (Fraser et al., 2016). In 2013, diagnosis rates vs. the estimated prevalence rates varied from 81% in Sweden and 43% in Belgium to just 16% in Turkey (Table (Table1;1; Dore et al., 2014; Wedemeyer et al., 2015).
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