NSW Health Pathology and its partners have been recognised for their work in validating the Dried Blood Spot test for diagnosing hepatitis C.

The 2024 NSW Health Awards were held in Syd­ney last week, to recog­nise and cel­e­brate staff and vol­un­teers from across local health dis­tricts, pil­lars, net­works and health organisations.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy had final­ists in three cat­e­gories – Health Inno­va­tion, Patient Safe­ty First and for Staff Mem­ber of the Year.

We’re proud to say we won the Health Inno­va­tion award along­side our part­ners, Jus­tice Health, Mid North Coast Local Health Dis­trict and the Min­istry of Health for our work in val­i­dat­ing a Dried Blood Spot (DBS) test for hepati­tis C (HCV).

The project is the first of its kind in Aus­tralia, aim­ing to make DBS test­ing a stan­dard diag­nos­tic tool and trans­form­ing HCV test­ing for at-risk populations.

Over six months, the NSW Min­istry of Health in part­ner­ship with four Local Health Dis­tricts, Jus­tice Health NSW and Clarence Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­tre, col­lect­ed 1286 samples.

NSW Health Pathol­o­gy analysed the sam­ples to deter­mine the sen­si­tiv­i­ty and speci­fici­ty of the DBS test and will use the results to apply to the Ther­a­peu­tic Goods Asso­ci­a­tion (TGA) for validation.

If approved, this will be the only HCV DBS test avail­able in Aus­tralia. The part­ner­ships between the NSW Health sec­tor have been essen­tial for the large-scale val­i­da­tion in a short amount of time.

The DBS test pro­vides access to test­ing for vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions includ­ing peo­ple in prison and peo­ple with a his­to­ry of inject­ing drugs and will help NSW Health meet its goal of elim­i­nat­ing HCV as a pub­lic health issue by 2028.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all the teams involved in this vital work!

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