There have also been a few strange side effects reported, caused by a buildup of dac in the body from regular eating of a food that is a CYP3A4 Inhibitor.

eg.
http://fixhepc.com/forum/drug-interactions/611-cyp3a4-inhibitors-and-daclatasvir-fruits.html#8547

There was another similar post but I can’t find it, where the source of the dac buildup was unidentified but the person was told to only take a half dose of dac for one day and that seemed to reset her system. But I wouldn’t recommend doing that unless you were sure that a dac buildup was the problem. The doc seems to be the most knowledgeable on how to diagnose that.

I wish you well and hope that you find the information that you are looking for.
dt

I do feel bad when I complain about the NHS, they have been good in other areas in the past, but as you say, when these errors and delays can affect the health of patients, (as it did you DT) it’s a serious matter. What if a typo reflected a fibroscan eg? My notes from 1st hospital haven’t arrived at 2nd one yet, surely they should be digitally accessible?

It IS a serious matter, EVERY TIME. Because you can’t tell which time will be the time that causes you to lose your life. I actually had 6 unnecessary weeks of interferon if I count in the 2 more weeks that the NHS took to belatedly confirm the PCR result that I had obtained for myself. I would have liked to have stuck all the miscreants in that scenario with 6 weeks of interferon to see how much more motivated they would have been to produce the required test results.

There is a certain collective loyalty to the NHS in the UK such that people do feel bad complaining about it. When the NHS came into being in 1948 it was truly a godsend to people who had hitherto had no medical services at all if they could not pay. Shades of that reverence still survive to the present day. Also, there are areas which really are excellent. But time has moved on. The UK is in the EU and should have standards which match the best of the EU. It has become like the family secret that nobody wants to say out loud – that some parts of the NHS look more like the services of a third world country than a modern EU country. Now that our junior doctors trained in the UK have been railroaded into a new contract that they don’t believe in, we shall probably have to go to one of those third world countries to get treatment from one of them. Meanwhile who is going to be treating us here?

Of course all the records should be digitally accessible! We should also have the option of getting all our records downloaded straight to our mobile device if we want, or to a medical card which we can hand to the doctor who needs it. This goes for our dental and optical records as well. And yet we still have to navigate these legacy systems, waiting for weeks for records to arrive where they are needed because somebody somewhere along the administrative chain went on holiday, or something.

dt

I’ve got more to say about medical results coming in late.

Back when I was doing interferon tx I asked the NHS for more frequent PCRs and was refused. Consequently I turned to the few private services there were at the time to get an additional PCR done. I waited …and waited … and waited. I enquired. I enquired all the way up to the CEO of the company. Eventually I got a refund on the test when they admitted that their turnaround was not acceptable. Their excuse – they had been batching the PCR tests and they hadn’t got enough for a test run to be profitable.

So 4 weeks after the original test I turned to another company and got my result, only to be horrified that I had had a viral breakthrough. So because of that the tx was stopped, but I had had to endure 4 weeks more of interferon than necessary because the original test was late. I can imagine other circumstances where a 4 week delay might be fatal. Plus, if the NHS had had their way with saving the money on the PCR I’d have had many more months of futile interferon tx, unaware of the breakthrough.

So it’s no joke when medical tests come in late, or are not done at all when you have good reason to believe that they are necessary. Decisions are made on the results of these tests which can profoundly affect the health of the patient. It’s not like your car has to stay another day in the garage because a spare part wasn’t delivered, or your order from Amazon didn’t make the estimated date on your order confirmation. It is not just an another administrative nuisance – but so often it is treated as no more serious than that.

Don’t stand for it!
dt

Further to my last post, the blood services for which you don’t need to get a doctor tend to employ their own doctors. All the results are looked at by a doctor and an interpretation is included in the service. You are warned in advance that should anything abnormal show up in your tests then you may be strongly recommended to go to your own doctor and follow up on it. Some services include a free consultation with their doctor on your results if you request it.

So there is nothing irresponsible going on here. Except for the scaremongering put out by certain bodies with interests in keeping us dependent on them and in the dark. When the first English language bibles were produced, it became a crime in the UK to own one, punishable by burning at the stake as a heretic. So, people in high places were serious about protecting their interests. Now here we are 500 years later but human nature has not changed.

dt

more serious psychiatric effects directly of the DAAs – such as were experienced with interferon / riba.

Like what for example?
dt

I think Darbara’s idea has merit.
India is a huge country and different states have varying degrees of autonomy. I discovered this for myself when researching medical tourism in Delhi as opposed to medical tourism in Goa.

I am not talking about trying to get away with anything that is even technically illegal. I think it is quite possible that in some states in India it would be fine to ship the meds.

dt

Inequality looms darkly here, there and everywhere but when it concerns accessible healthcare it is more of a crime.

Inequality is a crime, period, and nowhere more than India which still practices the caste system, condemning people of low caste by virtue of their birth to be on the bottom rung of society.

Now we have the world economy struggling and the ones on the lower rungs struggling the most, such that this issue is front and centre with the US electorate in the run up to the presidential election, which will have vast repercussions on all of us in the rest of the world.

I think you are right LG. The current trends in healthcare in the UK are going nowhere good.

dt

Me too Mike.

And what is worse is that I think Gilead always knew that it would not get away with this extortion indefinitely, but it cynically calculated that it would get away with it long enough, to cash in enough, to make it worth while becoming the pariah that it now is.

I think that the spotlight should move from Gilead to all the agencies and bodies who have let this happen without speaking up till now. Their objections now are too little, too late. By the time they actually make any changes, if they ever do, Gilead will have got away with all the profits it always intended to make from Sofosbuvir and Harvoni, over the bodies of the countless dead. It is probably in cahoots with all these Johnny-come-latelys and dividing up the swag as I write. Heads should roll but, if the 2008 financial debacle is anything to go by, I doubt that they will.

dt