A proclamation recognizing May 19th as “Hepatitis Testing Day” and July 28th as “World Hepatitis Day”. A proclamation recognizing May 19th as “Hepatitis Testing Day” and July 28th as “World Hepatitis Day”.
Thank you all. Congratulations. All right, one more proclamation. 359. Councilman Lopez, will you please read proclamation 359. Thank you, Mr. President. Proclamation 359 series of 2015 recognizing May 19th as hepatitis testing day and July 28th as World Hepatitis Day. Whereas May 19th is National Hepatitis Testing Day, and July 28 is World Hepatitis Testing Day. Hepatitis C is recognized as the most common blood borne viral infection in the United States. And. WHEREAS, Hepatitis C has infected an estimated 70,000 Coloradans and as many as 4 million American residents, nearly one in 50 persons and more than 130 people I'm sorry, 130 million people worldwide. And. Whereas, it is the leading cause of cirrhosis and liver cancer and the number one reason for liver transplants in the United States. And. Whereas, more Americans die of hepatitis C than from HIV making Hepatitis C one of the top preventable causes of death in the United States. And. Whereas, many, as many as 17,000 hepatitis C related deaths occur annually in the United States, these rates are expected to peak between the years 2030 and 2035 at 36,000 deaths per year . And. WHEREAS, people born between 1945 and 1965 are five times more likely to be infected than any other adults. More than 75% of all people with hepatitis C in the United States are people in this age age range, and many remain unaware of their status because they have not been tested for the virus. And. WHEREAS, the incidence of hepatitis C disproportionately affects people of color. And. Whereas, 75% of infected persons do not show any signs or symptoms leading to the website to the hepatitis C virus to cause poor health outcomes and be labeled as, quote unquote, the silent epidemic. And. WHEREAS, the majority of individuals living with hepatitis C infection can be cured of the virus through the advent of effective treatment options currently available on the market and those cured through the treatment are able to stop and even reverse damage to the liver caused by the virus. And. WHEREAS, Hepatitis C treatment costs are less than one fifth the cost of liver transplants. And. WHEREAS, Hepatitis C can be prevented, testing can identify existing infections, and early diagnosis and treatment can save lives, money and resources. And. Whereas, Hep C connection is available as a statewide resource for education testing, linkage to care and other support services. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Council of the City and County of Denver, Section one, the Denver City Council agrees that preventing and treating hepatitis C is an important public health initiative that will improve the quality of life for Denver residents affected by the virus. Section two The Denver City Council proclaims May 19th as hepatitis testing day and recognizes July 28th as World Hepatitis Day. And Section three at the clerk of the city and county of Denver shall test and affix a seal of the city and county of Denver to this proclamation and that a copy be transmitted to Nancy Steinfurth, executive director of the hep-C Connection. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Your motion to adopt. Thank you, Mr. President. I move that council proclamation number 359 series of 2015 be adopted. It has been moved and seconded. Comments. Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I have the honor and the pride to be able to pass this proclamation, will introduce this proclamation and hopefully, hopefully pass it well. Every year, with the hopes that we can get the word out there to educate people about this virus. Now, it is true, a lot of folks that who were from 1945 1965 and contracted it my I use this example because my grandfather who served in World War Two was injured and because of his injuries received a blood transfusion and because they did not test or screen for this then and were generally unaware of it, he contracted it. And the reason why he is not here today and died early is because of cirrhosis of the liver that was caused by that blood transfusion by hepatitis C. And had we had known about it a long time ago, he would probably still be here. There are a lot of people who are unaware of of their infection. It was a lot of people who have a lot of myths about hep C. It is preventable. We do have treatment for it. We just have to make sure that the word gets out and that we treat it like any other disease where we have to know as much as we can about it and keep folks aware of it and not humanize the folks that have it, but help them. And this is something that is the silent epidemic and it is preventable. And, Mr. President, I it plays on my emotions a little bit to read this proclamation, because I totally wish that we could have done this a long, long time ago and that these kind of proclamations are read in council a long, long time ago. So I am very honored to read this. I'm very honored to participate in your organization, your activities. And I asked my college colleagues to join me in supporting this proclamation and moving this forward. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Lopez. Councilwoman Ortega. It was not on this bill. Sorry. Oh, okay. I apologize. Any other comments? Proclamation 359482. Supported. Seen on Madam Secretary. Roll call. Lopez. Hi, Montero. Hi, Nevitt. I Ortega. I Rob Shepherd. I Susman. Hi. Brooks. What's. Lehman. Hi. Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary, please call the vote in and the results. Tonight. Tonight, Proclamation 359 has been adopted. Kathryn Lopez. There's somebody you'd like to invite to a podium to receive the proclamation. Yeah, Mr. President, I'd like to invite the director, executive director of the hep-C Connection, Ms.. Nancy Steinfurth, if you want to come up and introduce. Your partner. Thank you all very much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you once again about this resolution. It's a really important public health issue, and I am honored that the Denver City Council has chosen to support this for many years now in the 2014 Health of Denver Report created by the Office Environmental of Environmental Health. It lists chronic liver disease as the seventh top leading cause of death in Denver and chronic liver disease as the fifth leading cause of premature death in Denver. Hepatitis C figures prominently in these rankings, but it doesn't have to. We encourage baby boomers and those with risk factors to get tested for free tomorrow in. The web. Building from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.. There is a cure, but only if you know you have the disease. So we strongly encourage everyone to get tested tomorrow. There's no sign up. You just walk in. It takes 20 minutes. It's a little fingerstick. It takes 20 minutes to get the results, I should say fingerstick 20 minutes. Good to go. So I would now like to introduce Dr. Sarah Rowan, who is from Denver Health. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, city council, for allowing me to speak about hepatitis C. I run a testing program and I treat patients who have hepatitis C. Hep C affects people of all ages, not just baby boomers. Women who are pregnant can transmit hep C to their babies. It affects young adults. It affects people in middle age, in forties, fifties, and it affects the baby boomer cohort that was born in 1945 to 1965. Unfortunately for the past, for the first time in the past 30 years, we're seeing an increase in new infections from hep C. There is a huge amount of transmission in the seventies and eighties and then the incidence went down and as I said, for the first time in 30 years, the incidence is increasing again. Our current data suggests that in Colorado the incidence is stable, but our data is based on surveillance from 2012 and 2013. That's the most up to date numbers that we have statewide about hepatitis C in neighboring states, including especially the ones in Central Appalachia or Appalachia, depending where you're from. They've seen a 364% increase in hepatitis C among people under age 30 from 2006 to 2012. In fact, 30 states around the country have seen an increase in hepatitis C and in that same time period. The CDC reports that in those Appalachian states with which are Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, they've seen a concurrent increase in admissions for treatment for opiate abuse and specifically injection drug abuse. The link between opiate abuse, injection, drug abuse and hepatitis C is very clear. This has been well documented in Colorado. As you all know, we have an increase in prescription drug opiate abuse in Colorado. And similarly, we have an increase in heroin use in both urban and non-urban areas in Colorado. In fact, from 2012 to 2013, there was a 27% increase in heroin use among people ages 18 to 24. We hope that harm reduction measures like needle exchange and increased testing that have been implemented to prevent HIV transmission will stem what seems like an inevitable increase in hepatitis C among young people. However, as treatment is not widely available for hepatitis C, the increase in hepatitis C that is coming to Colorado seems unfortunately inevitable. The second large population that's affected by hep C is the baby boomers in Colorado, specifically in the Denver metro. We have an increase in liver related cancers, cirrhosis, decompensated cirrhosis and liver related death. Many people were infected before hepatitis C was even discovered, and the blood supply wasn't tested until 1992. So now, as the people who are infected in the seventies, eighties and early nineties are approaching 30 years of infection, they're developing complications of hepatitis C . It's a very indolent virus. But when it develops into hepatitis, into cirrhosis, the risk for decompensation and liver disease related death increases significantly. Our estimates from the state level suggest maybe 3000, maybe 7000 cases of hepatitis C. However, estimates from local data from Adams, Arapahoe and Denver counties suggests we may have 20,000 cases in just those three counties. Therefore, the cost, the morbidity and the mortality from hepatitis C will be increasing in the coming years. The majority of patients have Medicaid, so there will be an increased public burden of the cost of these treatments or lack of treatments. Testing for hepatitis C is the most important way to start the treatment process and to stem the growing morbidity and mortality. As I've mentioned to you the past two years, we've been doing a community testing initiative at Denver Health where we test in all of our community health clinics. We found that of 3000 baby boomers tested who had never been tested for Hep C before, 9% have hep C. So these are folks who never knew they had Hep C of the African-American men tested. 16% have hepatitis C. This is an incredible disparity in our community that needs to be addressed and also speaks to this increase in morbidity and mortality that we will be seeing. That concludes my comments and I'll be happy to take any questions. And thank you again for letting me speak. Thank you. I don't believe we had any questions. Thank you all for that. And thank you, Councilman Lopez, for bringing that forward again. All right. Those are two proclamations. We were ready for the resolution. Madam Secretary, please read the resolutions. From infrastructure and culture to 66 resolution laying out, opening and establishing as part of city streets as some parts of L.A. Public Alley bounded by exterior street, Wall Street, West Fourth Avenue and West Fifth Avenue to 69 resolution lane out of any step change, Prior says in parcel Lana's East Mexico Avenue between South Jackson Street, South Colorado